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THE     BIBLE 

THAT    WAS    LOST 
AND    IS    FOUND 


J^y 


"...    I  hope  in  thy  word." 
**  Uphold  me  according  unto  thy  word,  that  I  may  live: 
^^      and  let  me  not  be  ashamed  of  my  hope." 
I  Mn  thy  servant;  give  me  understanding,  that  I  may 
know  thy  testimonies." 

Psalm  cxix,  Sx,  it6, 12$, 


NEW-CH  iiOARD 

1W2 


■ 


THE     BIBLE 

THAT   WAS    LOST 
AND    IS    FOUND 


By 
JOHN  BIGELOW 


"...    I  hope  in  thy  word." 

"  Uphold  me  according  unto  thy  word,  that  I  may  live: 

and  let  me  not  be  ashamed  of  my  hope." 
"  I  am  thy  servant;  give  me  understanding,  that  I  may 

know  thy  testimonies." 

Psalm  cxiz,  8i,  ii6, 125. 


NEW  YORK 

NEW- CHURCH  BOARD  OF  PUBLICATION 

1912 


«  •   *  *- 


^•^^^' 

^^< 
^ 


Copyright,  1912,  by 
New-Church  Board  of  Publication. 


INTRODUCTION. 

While  John  Bigelow  was  yet  visibly  among  us, 
he  was  frequently  besought  to  give  wider  publicity  to 
the  account  which  he  prepared  for  the  inner  circle  of 
his  family  and  spiritual  companions  of  how  he  came  to 
have  such  an  abiding  faith  in  Emanuel  Swedenborg  as 
a  divinely  commissioned  interpreter  of  the  Sacred 
Scriptures  and  a  revelator  of  truths  of  angelic  wisdom. 
Those  of  us  who  were  privileged  to  know  him  well,  and 
who  loved  to  hear  him  converse  on  spiritual  themes, 
know  that  he  treasured  this  part  of  his  life's  experiences 
as  something  that  was  peculiarly  sacred.  Implicit  as 
was  his  faith,  unbounded  as  was  his  enthusiasm,  there 
never  was  the  slightest  trace  of  self-confidence  or  pride 
of  intelligence.  Firm  in  his  belief,  he  was  never  dog- 
matic. He  was  unflinchingly  loyal  to  the  system  of 
truth  to  which  he  felt  he  owed  so  much  of  his  life's 
happiness,  but  he  was  extremely  catholic.  The  spirit 
of  sectarianism  was  not  in  him.  He  longed,  rather,  to 
see  the  truths  which  had  made  the  Word  of  God 
a  veritable  lamp  to  his  feet  and  a  light  to  his  path  avail- 
able to  all  who  might  profit  by  them,  irrespective  of  any 
claims  of  denominationalism.  He  found  satisfaction 
in  going  Sunday  after  Sunday  to  the  Church  on  East 
Thirty-fifth  street;  and,  while  he  never  faltered  in  his 
attachment  to  it,  truth  compels  me  to  say  that  his  in- 
terest and  his  hopes  were  never  confined  to  the  local 

I 


760286 


organization  which  prized  his  spiritual  fellowship,  and 
for  which  he  did  so  much. 

It  was  in  the  spring  of  191 1  that  I  went  to  Mr.  Bige- 
low  and  asked  him,  for  the  sake  of  the  good  that  might 
be  accomplished,  to  allow  me  to  edit  this  present  volume. 
I  urged  that  at  the  time  when  the  tercentenary  of  the 
Authorized  Version  of  our  English  Bible  was  being 
celebrated,  it  was  peculiarly  fitting  that  he  should  make 
public  his  testimony  as  to  how  the  Bible  had  been 
established  for  him  as  the  veritable  Word  of  God. 
He  listened  to  me  patiently  as  I  tried  to  persuade  him 
that  the  narration  of  his  religious  experiences  might 
be  helpful  to  many  outside  of  his  own  immediate  circle 
of  friends.  He  was  unfeignedly  modest  on  this  point, 
but  he  promised  to  consider  the  matter.  A  few  days 
later  he  wrote  that  he  felt  he  had  no  right  to  withhold 
anything  that  might  prove  useful,  and  that  he  would 
leave  the  matter  entirely  in  my  hands.  He  sent  me  a 
copy  of  his  "Bible  That  Was  Lost  and  Is  Found,"  in 
which  he  had  indicated  changes  and  additions  that 
should  be  made,  and  with  it  a  large  number  of  letters 
from  friends  who  had  received  copies  of  the  original 
edition.  In  his  characteristic  way  he  said  that  he  felt 
I  was  entitled  to  any  assistance  he  could  place  at  my 
disposal,  inasmuch  as  I  was  willing  to  act  as  a  midwife 
in  the  birth  of  this  new  progeny. 

A  little  later,  at  a  time  when  he  felt  that  the  last 
hours  of  his  earthly  life  were  drawing  to  a  close,  he 
dictated  the  following  lines : 

"I  am  very  ill.  It  is  doubtful  whether  I  shall 
ever  see  you  again  in  this  world,  or  live  to  see 
the  little  book  you  have  so  kindly  volunteered 


to  mother.  It  is  a  satisfaction  to  me  to  reflect 
that,  before  I  am  called  away,  I  am  permitted 
to  make  a  contribution  to  the  Christian  Church 
which  you  think  may  prove  useful  to  the  world 
I  am  soon  to  leave  behind  me.  I  am  too  feeble 
to  say  anything  more,  except  to  invoke  the 
blessing  of  our  Father  in  heaven  upon 
*  *  *  the  modest  Church  with  which  we 
both  have  so  many  glorious  associations." 

It  could  not  be  otherwise  than  that  in  preparing  this 
book  to  go  forth  on  what  I  confidently  expect  to  be  a 
mission  of  wide  usefulness,  I  have  counted  it  a  labor  of 
love;  a  labor  of  love  to  one  of  the  grandest  of  men, 
whom  the  Lord  in  His  good  Providence  has  raised  up 
to  be  so  worthy  a  witness  of  the  truths  of  His  New 

Church. 

JuuAN  K.  Smyth. 
New  York  City, 
June,  19 1 2, 


PREFACE  TO  THE  FIRST  EDITION. 

My  De:ar  Childre:n  : 

When  Joshua  was  about  to  cross  the  Jordan  with  the 
Ark  of  the  Covenant  to  enter  the  Promised  Land,  he 
was  commanded  by  the  Lord  to  select  one  man  from 
each  tribe  to  take  charge  of  the  ark  who,  "out  of  the 
midst  of  Jordan  where  the  Priests'  feet  stood  firm," 
were  "to  take  twelve  stones ;  carry  them  over  with  them, 
and  lay  them  down  in  the  lodging  place  where  they 
should  lodge  that  night."  Joshua  complied  with  these 
instructions,  and  when  the  people  came  up  out  of 
Jordan,  the  Lord  said  to  them,  "When  your  children 
shall  ask  their  fathers  in  time  to  come  saying.  What 
mean  these  stones?  then  ye  shall  let  your  children 
know,  saying,  'Israel  came  over  this  Jordan  on  dry  land. 
For  the  Lord  your  God  dried  up  the  waters  of  Jordan 
from  before  you  until  ye  were  passed  over,  as  the  Lord 
your  God  did  to  the  Red  Sea  which  He  dried  up  from 
before  us  until  we  were  passed  over ;  that  all  the  people 
of  the  earth  may  know  the  hand  of  the  Lord  that  it  is 
mighty,  that  they  may  fear  the  Lord  your  God 
forever.'  " 

The  duty  here  imposed  by  the  Lord  upon  Joshua  and 
his  followers  to  commemorate  the  passage  of  Israel  in 
safety  through  the  Red  Sea  and  over  Jordan,  was  not 
a  duty  imposed  merely  to  meet  a  temporary  exigency  of 

5 


,4\- |o%-y»^'*|r;aiisient  papulation,  but  like  all  duties  imposed  by 
Jehovah-Lord  was  of  universal  application,  and  as  en- 
during as  Truth  and  Right;  and  every  person  v^ho  has 
the  grace  to  realize  that  he  has  been  led  by  the  same 
mighty  hand  and  outstretched  arm  safely  out  of  the 
bondage  of  false  doctrines  and  through  a  v^ilderness 
beset  with  temptations  and  peril,  into  the  freedom  of 
those  whom  the  Truth  makes  free,  is  bound  to  testify  by 
some  equally  unequivocal  memorial  a  grateful  sense  of 
his  deliverance. 

Under  the  inspiration  of  this  sacred  lesson,  and  in  the 
humble  hope  of  rendering  my  experience  possibly  of  use 
to  you  and  perhaps  to  some  others,  I  have  prepared  the 
following  narrative  of  the  circumstances  which  led  to 
my  own  deliverance  from  a  spiritual  bondage  no  less 
oppressive  and  degrading,  nor,  I  imagine,  very  different 
from  that  which  the  Israelites  endured  in  Egypt.  I  hope 
that  with  God's  blessing  it  may  help  you  to  remember 
the  Red  Sea  and  the  Jordan  which  every  regenerating 
soul  must  cross,  and  encourage  you  on  the  journey  to 
put  your  trust  absolutely  and  exclusively  in  the  guidance 
and  protection  of  Him  who  never  leaves  a  prayer  unan- 
swered; who  never  refuses  an  appeal  to  Him  but  in 
mercy,  and  who  never  neglects  an  opportunity  of  pro- 
moting the  welfare  of  any  of  His  creatures. 

Your  Affectionate  Father. 

21  Cramer cy  Parky 
New  York,  Christmas,  1893. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 

The  narrative  which  is  here,  and  now  for  the  first 
time  submitted  to  the  public,  was  prepared  and  privately 
printed  some  years  ago  for  the  information  of  my 
children  and  a  few  friends  who,  for  personal  reasons, 
were  likely  to  take  an  interest  in  its  revelations.  From 
most  of  the  latter,  and  among  them  were  many  whose 
judgment  was  entitled  to  great  weight  with  me,  I 
received  earnest  appeals  to  give  it  to  the  public.  I 
shrank,  however,  from  incurring  even  a  suspicion  of 
attaching  undue  importance  to  experiences  and  opinions 
of  such  a  strictly  personal  character,  or  of  presuming  to 
commend  them  specially  to  the  consideration  of  an 
exoteric  circle.  Since  then  times  have  changed,  and  I 
have  changed  with  them.  I  have  allowed  myself  to  be 
persuaded  that  the  time  has  arrived  in  the  ecclesiastical 
evolution  of  our  own  country  at  least,  when  it  is  not 
impossible  nor  even  improbable  that  there  are  many  who 
may  find  deliverance  from  baleful  doubts  or  pernicious 
illusions,  and  have  an  impaired  faith  in  the  Bible 
strengthened  by  the  process  to  which  I  feel  myself  to 
be  supremely  indebted  and  which  I  have  attempted  in 
these  pages  to  describe. 

The  Christian  Church  rests  at  every  point  for  its 
foundations  upon  the  Divine  authorship  and  inspira- 
tion of  at  least  the  greater  part  of  what  is  known  as  the 

7 


Holy  Bible.  To  displace  one  stone  of  that  foundation 
is  thought  by  many,  and  I  think  correctly,  to  convert  the 
Christian  Church  into  a  group  of  quasi  religious  clubs 
having  only  secular  charters,  and  with  no  better  guaran- 
ty for  endurance  than  a  Bank  or  an  Insurance  Corpora- 
tion. Between  the  labors  of  the  Scientists  outside  the 
Church,  and  the  Critical  miners  inside  the  Church, 
teachings  that  would  have  imperilled  the  liberty  if  not 
the  lives  of  their  authors  a  century  or  two  ago,  are  not 
only  publicly  taught  from  pulpits  and  professional 
chairs,  but  are  sanctioned  by  the  most  highly  accredited 
ecclesiastical  organizations  in  our  land.  The  Bible  is 
dealt  with  by  scholars  of  influence  and  distinction  as 
literature  merely,  and  judged  by  them  in  the  same 
literary  spirit  as  they  would  judge  the  Sentences  of 
Marcus  Antoninus.  From  one  Episcopal  pulpit  we  were 
recently  told  that  "it  is  probably  true  that  ninety  per 
cent,  of  our  bishops  believe  and  teach  views  for  which 
Bishop  Colenso  was  deposed."  Another  speaks  of  the 
New  Testament  as  "a  bundle  of  left-over  documents." 
Still  another  insists  that  the  first  two  chapters  of 
Matthew  form  simply  a  beautiful  legend. 

Even  in  the  face  of  these  painful  disclosures,  I  hope 
it  is  with  becoming  diffidence  that  I  venture  to  dissent 
from  those  who  quarrel  with  what  it  is  the  fashion  to 
call  "Higher  Criticism,"  and  who  denounce  it  as,  "Evil 
and  for  evil  only  good."  I  cannot  believe  that  more 
harm  can  come  from  the  study  of  God's  Word  than 
from  the  study  of  His  works. 

We  are  all  united  in  encouraging  the  application  of 
Higher  Criticism  to  the  stars,  to  the  garb  of  the  earth 
and  the  treasures  concealed  in  its  bowels ;  we  erect  monu- 

8 


ments  in  honor  of  the  men  who  correct  our  erroneous 
impressions  of  any  of  Nature^s  laws;  why  should  we 
honor  the  critical  student  of  God's  Word  less  than  the 
critical  student  of  His  works,  if  both  are  working  with 
an  equal  singleness  of  eye  to  the  truth? 

Nor  will  I  disguise  my  conviction,  without  in  the  least 
undervaluing  the  work  of  the  Christian  Pulpit,  that  it 
has  accomplished  far  less  than  has  the  Higher  Criticism 
during  the  last  century  by  stimulating  throughout  the 
world  an  inclination  "to  search  the  Scriptures,"  and 
rallying  the  nobler  energies  of  humanity  to  their 
defence.  Accustomed  as  most  Christians  are  to  listen 
to  ministers  and  associate  with  people  who  take  the 
Divine  origin  of  the  Bible  for  granted,  we  grow  up 
knowing  little  or  nothing  about  its  everlasting  founda- 
tions. It  is  only  when  they  are  assailed  that  earnest 
Christians  set  to  work  to  investigate  the  imputed  weak- 
ness of  those  foundations,  and  are  thus  equipped  to 
demonstrate  their  impregnability. 

It  was  in  the  Wilderness,  according  to  the  prophet 
Isaiah,  that  the  way  of  the  Lord  was  to  be  prepared 
and  made  straight;  and  '^a  highway  for  our  God"  in 
the  desert. 

So,  false  ideas,  superannuated  dogmas,  sectarian 
prejudices  must  be  overcome  and  exterminated  before 
we  are  prepared  for  the  unconditional  reception  of 
new  truths. 

To  abandon  a  class  of  opinions  and  replace  them  with 
one  of  opposite  opinions  involves  our  being  for  a  time — 
for  a  moment  at  least — without  either ;  when  our  minds 
are  vastated,  a  desert  without  grass  or  herb  yielding 
seed.    Our  condition  may  be  compared  to  that  of  a  man 

9 


on  the  top  of  a  mountain  having  occasion  to  cross  to  the 
top  of  an  opposite  mountain.  He  must  descend  to  the 
valley  that  separates  these  mountains  before  he  can 
begin  to  ascend  the  mountain  opposite.  So  we  must 
descend  the  mountain  of  fallacious  dogma  to  the  valley 
of  absolute  unbelief,  before  we  can  ascend  the  Holy 
Mountain  of  Divine  Truth.  Hence  it  rarely,  if  ever, 
happens  that  a  person  changes  what  he  calls  his  religion 
without  becoming,  for  a  time  at  least,  an  agnostic  or  an 
unbeliever.  The  Israelites  were  required  to  wander 
forty  years  in  the  Wilderness  before  they  could  be  cured 
of  their  polytheistic  delusions  and  made  to  believe  that 
there  was  but  one  God  and  He  the  Maker  of  Heaven 
and  Earth,  without  whom  was  nothing  made  that  was 
made. 

Only  our  Heavenly  Father  knows  whether  at  the  last, 
Peter  or  Thomas  would  have  made  the  greater  sacrifices 
for  his  Lord  and  Master. 

Perhaps  one  of  the  greatest  troubles  with  which  the 
visible  Church  on  earth  has  had  to  contend,  has  been  the 
fact  that  its  members  have  not  searched  the  Scriptures, 
that  they  have  perused  them  too  commonly  with  the 
eyes  only,  and  like  the  penitent  counting  her  beads,  as 
a  pious  ceremonial,  rather  than  with  any  expectation  of 
drawing  from  that  affluent  fountain,  "living  water  of 
which,  whosoever  drinketh  shall  never  thirst."  H  the 
Bible  be  the  Word  of  God,  it  is  necessarily  infinite  truth. 
It  can  be  nothing  else.  No  finite  being  can  therefore 
hope  to  understand  all  that  it  expresses.  No  book  of 
which  finite  man  could  comprehend  all  or  any  part  of 
the  contents  entirely,  could  possibly  be  the  Word  of  God. 
We  learn  the  lessons  of  God's  Word  as  we  learn  those 

10 


which  are  taught  by  His  works,  which  constitute  our 
earthly  or  natural  environment,  little  by  little;  and  yet 
the  navigator  of  the  ocean  of  Natural  Science  finds  its 
shores  recede  from  him  as  fast  if  not  faster  than  he 
approaches  them.  So  it  will  ever  be.  The  truths  of 
God's  Word  must  also  and  always  be  mastered  little  by 
little,  and  only  so  far  and  so  fast  as  we  quahfy  our- 
selves'to  receive  and  assimilate  them  in  our  lives.  We 
can  never  know  absolute  truth,  but  we  can  always  be 
increasing  our  knowledge  of  what  seems  to  us  truth, 
and  which  therefore  is  to  us  ethically  true.  While  we 
can  never  expect  to  understand  all  the  wisdom  of  God's 
Word,  whether  recorded  in  the  Bible  or  in  nature,  we 
can  always  be  growing  more  and  more  into  His  image 
by  studying  both.  Anything  therefore  that  concentrates 
attention  upon  God's  Word  and  invites  or  provokes  men 
to  the  study  of  it,  enlarges  the  sphere  of  its  influence. 
The  only  faithful  student  of  the  Bible  is  the  critical 
student,  he  who  searches  to  find  its  hidden  meaning. 
But  he  will  at  no  time  find  in  it  so  much  of  what  seems 
to  him  to  be  truth,  that  his  estimate  of  it  may  not  be 
greatly  modified  by  subsequent  perusals.  Unless  the 
Bible  seems  like  a  new  book  every  time  it  is  read,  no 
matter  how  frequently,  it  is  because  it  has  not  been 
read  thoughtfully,  reverently,  indeed  I  may  say,  critic- 
ally. All  the  lessons  of  the  Bible  can  no  more  be  appre- 
hended from  a  single  perusal  than  the  productive  power 
of  a  farm  can  be  harvested  in  a  single  crop.  There  is 
nothing  more  fatal  to  the  diffusion  of  spiritual  truth 
than  using  the  Word  like  a  chaplet  or  leaving  it  in  too 
costly  binding  for  use  as  a  profession  of  faith  on 
the  parlor  table.     The  eloquent  Bishop  of  New  York 

II 


improved  a  recent  occasion  to  probe  this  evil  in  an 
official  communication,  in  the  course  of  which  he 
said: 

"A  modern  fetichism  which  has  dishonored  the 
Bible  by  claiming  to  be  its  elect  guardian,  has  shut 
it  up  these  many  years  within  the  iron  walls  of  a 
dreary  literalism,  robbing  it  thus  alike  of  interest  and 
of  power." 

Criticism  even  in  a  hostile  spirit  has  never  succeeded 
in  seriously  obstructing  the  diffusion  of  God's  truth  or 
the  coming  of  His  kingdom  on  the  earth.  The  Bible 
has  been  no  end  of  times  like  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
dragged  to  the  brow  of  a  hill  to  be  cast  down  from  it; 
but  like  Jesus,  it  has  always  passed  through  the  midst 
of  its  enemies,  and  gone  on  its  way  in  every  such  crisis 
giving  new  and  more  impressive  evidence  of  its  Divine 
mission. 

Voltaire's  presumptuous  boast  that  he  had  given  the 
Christian  Church  its  coup  de  grace  provoked  the  syn- 
chronous establishment  of  the  British  Bible  Society 
which  has  spread  the  sacred  record  throughout  the 
world  in  every  written  tongue,  and  among  millions  who 
had  never  heard  either  of  it  or  of  its  divine  author. 
When  the  learned  Bishop  of  New  York  proclaimed  that 
a  modern  fetichism  which  has  dishonored  the  Bible  by 
claiming  to  be  its  elect  guardian,  had  shut  it  up  through 
many  years  within  the  iron  walls  of  a  dreary  literalism, 
he  administered  a  more  serious  and  wide  reaching  re- 
buke to  the  bishops  and  other  clergy  of  his  Church  than 
had  ever  before  emanated  from  the  Episcopal  bench  in 
our  time.  And  he  uttered  a  truth,  too,  which  promises 
to  mark  an  epoch  in  the  evolution  of  Bible  religion.    It 

12 


has  brought  the  religious  communion  of  which  he  is 
the  hierarchical  head  in  his  diocese  face  to  face  with 
several  questions  of  considerable  gravity. 
Here  are  some  of  them : 

1.  What  does  his  Reverence  mean  by  the  word 
"literalism,"  whether  dreary  or  otherwise,  that  has 
made  the  Bible  for  many  years  the  victim  of  a  modern 
fetichism;  does  he  mean  that  the  Bible  is  not  Hterally 
true,  and  therefore  to  that  extent  at  least  not  inspired? 

2.  Must  not  any  book  which  is  not  literally  true,  be 
to  the  same  extent  literally  untrue,  and  so  far  mis- 
leading? 

3.  If  true  in  any  sense,  how  is  that  sense  to  be  ascer- 
tained ? 

4.  Does  the  Bishop  propose  to  let  his  Church  mark 
time  while  Dr.  Briggs  and  other  critical  students  find 
out  the  portions  of  the  Bible  which  are  inspired,  if 
any,  and  those  which  are  not;  or  would  he  restrict  the 
reading  of  the  entire  Bible  to  a  class  set  apart  and 
trained  to  select  the  portions  suitable  for  the  flock,  as 
the  Latin  Church  has  done? 

5.  What  tribunal  have  we  that  is  competent  to  guar- 
antee the  superiority  of  the  Canon  of  Dr.  Briggs,  to 
that  of  St.  Jerome  ? 

To  all  these  questions  is  there  any  answer  which 
would  not  be  fatal  to  any  pretensions  of  the  Bible  to 
be  regarded  as  the  Word  of  God  or  as  a  Rule  of  Faith 
to  men,  that  is,  better  than  that  which  was  embodied  in 
the  words  of  Paul  when  writing  on  behalf  of  himself 
and  his  companions  to  the  Romans,  he  said  that  now 
"We  serve  in  the  newness  of  the  spirit  and  not  in  the 
oldness  of  the  letter"? 

13 


Let  it  be  observed  that  Paul  notices  the  oldness  of  the 
letter,  but  seems  to  have  had  no  notion  of  its  dreariness. 
What  he  meant  by  oldness  here  may  be  inferred  from 
what  he  said  in  his  famous  13th  Chapter  of  his  first 
Epistle  to  the  Corinthians,  "When  I  was  a  child  I  spake 
as  a  child,  I  felt  as  a  child,  I  thought  as  a  child:  now 
that  I  am  become  a  man,  I  put  away  childish  things. 
For  now  we  see  through  a  glass  darkly  [the  letter  of  the 
law]  but  then  [when  that  which  is  perfect  is  come]  face 
to  face :  now  I  know  in  part,  but  then  shall  I  know  even 
as  also  I  have  been  known." 

This  comparison  of  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  the 
childish  mind  with  those  of  the  adult,  expresses  to  my 
mind  the  precise  distinction  between  the  uses  of  the 
literal  garb  of  the  Bible  and  of  its  spiritual  contents. 
Paul  does  not  pretend  to  undervalue  what  he  felt, 
thought  or  did  as  a  child.  He  merely  calls  attention  to 
the  difference  between  the  natural  and  the  spiritual  in- 
telligence, the  one  enlightened  by  love,  and  the  other 
not,  or  only  partially,  so  enlightened. 

Here  I  am  prompted  to  ask  whether  the  Bible  may 
not  be  true  to  some  in  one  sense  and  to  others  in  another 
sense?  No  book  is  true  to  a  child  in  the  sense  that  it  is 
true  to  a  grown  person.  In  fact,  science  has  never  been 
able  to  teach  us  anything  which  did  not  expand  or  con- 
tract in  its  dimensions  with  increasing  knowledge  and 
experience.  The  world  believed,  no  one  knows  how 
many  thousand  years,  that  the  sun  revolved  around  the 
earth,  and  the  only  Church,  which  claims  dogmatically  to 
be  infallible,  treated  as  a  blasphemous  heresy  any  denial 
of  it.  Even  to  this  day  we  all  speak  of  the  sun's  rising 
and  setting,  a  statement  scientifically  absurd  but  per- 

14 


fectly  true  as  understood  by  both  speaker  and  hearer. 
The  sun  does  rise  and  set  to  us,  for  such  is  the  report  of 
the  fact  as  daily  made  to  us  by  our  senses. 

When  a  ship  leaves  the  port  of  San  Francisco  for 
Japan  no  one  ever  questions  the  report  that  she  is  sailing 
westward,  and  yet  in  point  of  fact  she  is  moving  with 
incalculable  rapidity  in  precisely  the  opposite  direction. 

^sop's  fables  of  the  wolf  complaining  of  the  lamb 
for  polluting  the  stream  at  which  both  are  drinking; 
of  the  grasshopper  asking  alms  of  the  ant;  of  the  com- 
petitive trial  of  the  wind  and  the  sun  to  compel  the 
traveller  to  take  off  his  cloak,  are  all  as  true  as  any 
history  is  to  the  child,  but  no  less  true  to  the  adult 
though  in  a  very  different  sense.  Why  may  not  the 
literal  sense  of  the  Bible  be  the  repository  of  as  much 
and  as  important  truths  to  undeveloped  and  untutored 
minds,  a  class  which  would  include  by  far  the  larger 
part  of  the  human  race,  and  at  the  same  time  to  more 
developed  minds  teach  a  class  of  truths  far  more  pro- 
found, but  in  no  important  sense  inconsistent  with 
them?  No  one  would  propose  to  prohibit  the  reading  of 
-S^sop's  fables  because  he  represented  animals  as  talking 
a  written  language.  There  is  little  doubt  that  children 
absorb  more  important  truths  by  the  perusal  of  those 
fables  according  to  their  measure  of  intelligence  than 
adults  do,  though  not  a  single  fact  as  stated  in  them  is 
literally  true. 

To  do  precisely  what  Paul  said  he  had  done,  is  what 
the  so-called  orthodox  Churches  of  our  day  have 
hitherto  refused,  or  rather  perhaps  neglected,  to  do,  but 
what  they  must  do  before  they  can  emancipate  the  Bible 
from  the  *'dreary  literalism''  in  which  it  is  immured. 

IS 


Their  clergy  must  be  ministers  of  a  new  covenant;  not 
of  the  letter,  but  of  the  spirit.  To  emphasize  that 
necessity  at  a  moment  which  seems  specially  propitious 
for  its  consideration,  has  been  my  only  excuse  for  pre-  i 

suming  to  enlarge  the  circle  for  which  the  following  ' 

narrative  was  originally  prepared. 
The  Squirrels 

June  7,  191 1. 


16 


N 


I 

Could  I  believe  that  any  one  event  in  our  lives  was 
more  strictly  Providential  than  another,  I  should  say 
without  hesitation  that  the  event  or  series  of  events 
which  led  me  to  the  island  of  St.  Thomas  in  the  winter 
of  1854  deserves  that  distinction.  When  I  left  home  I 
had  but  one  well  defined  purpose,  aside  from  a  little  rec- 
reation; that  was  to  visit  Hayti  to  see  what  sort  of 
work,  Africans  born  and  bred  in  slavery,  were  making 
of  self-government,  a  question  about  which  public  senti- 
ment in  the  United  States  was  then  seriously  divided 
and  in  which  both  as  a  journalist  and  a  patriot  I  then  felt 
a  special  interest.  I  had  no  thought  of  going  farther. 
I  had  no  curiosity  to  see  St.  Thomas  or  any  of  its  in- 
habitants. I  was  borne  thither,  too,  by  a  chain  of  inci- 
dents, every  one  of  which  I  would  gladly  have  avoided. 
It  proved  to  be  the  only  way  by  which  I  could  get  home 
to  the  United  States  without  indefinite  delay.  Port-au- 
Prince,  where  I  had  my  headquarters  while  in  Hayti, 
was  desolated  by  yellow  and  other  malignant  fevers  to 
such  an  extent  that  for  four  or  five  weeks  of  my  stay 
there,  most  of  the  vessels  in  port  were  prevented  from 
leaving  for  lack  of  sailors.  Of  the  entire  crew  of  the 
bark  that  brought  me  to  Hayti,  all  but  two  were  in  the 
cemetery  within  four  days  after  my  arrival.  Thus, 
when  ready  to  return,  I  was  compelled,  to  my  serious 
inconvenience,  to  cross  to  St.  Thomas  in  the  hope  of 

17 


there  getting  a  steamer  for  New  York.  On  my  arrival 
at  that  island,  however,  I  found  that  the  New  York 
steamer — there  was  then  but  one  on  the  line — had  met 
with  an  accident  on  her  last  homeward  voyage ;  at  least 
such  was  the  information  given  out  by  her  agents,  and 
had  gone  into  dock  in  New  York  for  repairs,  how  long 
to  be  detained  there,  no  one  at  St.  Thomas  professed  to 
know.  I  afterward  had  reason  to  suspect  that  the  acci- 
dent, if  any  had  been  sustained,  had  been  sufficiently 
magnified  to  make  it  serve  as  a  pretext  for  withdrawing 
her  temporarily  from  an  unprofitable  service,  St. 
Thomas  being  at  this  time  in  a  more  distressed  sanitary 
condition,  even,  than  Hayti.  A  French  emigrant  ship, 
bound  to  some  port  in  South  America,  had  been  driven 
in  there  in  distress  only  a  few  days  before  my  arrival, 
and  compelled  to  discharge  her  cargo  there.  The  negroes 
of  the  island  who  were  employed  for  this  work,  were 
stimulated  to  unaccustomed  fatigue  and  exposure  under 
a  broiling  sun,  by  extra  pay.  After  thus  being  over- 
heated by  day,  they  knew  no  better  than  to  lay  them- 
selves down  to  sleep  on  their  door  mats  as  usual  at  night, 
without  any  covering  and  in  most  cases  without  a  roof 
over  them.  The  consequence  in  nearly  every  instance 
was  a  chill,  for  the  temperature  at  midnight  was  from 
40  to  50  degrees  lower  than  at  noon;  and  the  cholera 
broke  out  on  the  very  next  day  with  such  virulence  that, 
within  a  month  after  the  arrival  of  the  distressed  vessel, 
one-tenth  of  the  population  of  the  island  were  in  their 
graves.  This  state  of  things  necessarily  prolonged  my 
detention,  for  the  vessels  in  the  harbor  by  which  I 
might  have  hoped  to  get  to  Havana  or  to  some  other 
Spanish  port  in  steam  communication  with  New  York, 

18 


could  get  no  charters  for  any  of  the  Spanish  islands  be- 
cause of  the  rigorous  and  prolonged  quarantine  to 
which  they  were  sure  to  be  condemned  for  having  sailed 
last  from  a  cholera-infected  district.  Consequently  I 
had  no  alternative  but  to  take  up  my  quarters  at  the 
principal,  indeed  the  only  hotel  on  the  island, — by  no 
means  a  bad  one, — kept  by  a  Creole  Spaniard  who  had 
formerly  conducted  a  similar  business  at  the  city  of  St. 
Domingo,  and  there  await  the  slow  revolution  of  the 
wheel  of  fortune. 

The  only  guest  sleeping  in  the  hotel — though  a  num- 
ber of  residents  took  their  meals  there — was  a  Danish 
lawyer  by  the  name  of  Kjerulff,  who  had  practised  his 
profession  for  many  years  in  St.  Thomas,  but  like  my- 
self, was  temporarily  established  at  the  hotel,  awaiting 
an  opportunity  of  getting  to  the  United  States  where  he 
had  some  pecuniary  interests  which  he  seemed  disposed 
to  increase.  We  naturally  fell  into  a  sort  of  acquaint- 
ance that  commonly  follows  contiguity,  and  which 
ripened  rapidly  when  he  discovered  that  we  had  some 
common  difficulties  to  overcome  and  a  common  desti- 
nation. 

One  morning  during  the  second  week  of  my  sojourn 
on  the  island,  Mr.  Kjerulff  and  I  chanced  both  to  be 
seated  in  the  spacious,  but  then  deserted  dining  hall — 
deserted  by  every  one  but  ourselves,  I  mean — ^he  at  one 
end  and  I  at  the  other,  and  both  with  books  in  our  hands. 
I  was  reading  the  Bible. 

n 

It  is  necessary  for  me  here  to  premise  that  both  my 
parents  were  Presbyterians  by  inheritance  and  convic- 

19 


tion,  and  I  was  brought  up  according  to  the  straitest  of 
the  sect.  In  my  eleventh  year,  however,  I  was  sent  to 
boarding  school,  and  it  was  never  my  privilege  to  live 
at  home  again  with  my  parents  except  in  my  school  and 
professional  vacations.  As  a  consequence,  I  suppose,  of 
being  thus  thrown  very  much  upon  my  own  resources,  I 
early  in  life  fell  or  rose,  I  cannot  say  which,  into  the 
habit  of  judging  for  myself,  according  to  my  limited 
lights,  of  the  logical  and  theological  merits  of  what  I 
heard  from  the  pulpit  and  read  in  the  Bible.  I  began 
quite  early  to  discern  what  looked  to  me  like  incon- 
sistencies and  improbabilities  in  its  pages.  Their  num- 
ber multiplied  with  my  growth,  and  all  the  faster  from 
the  fact  that  my  spiritual  guides,  for  the  most  part, 
failed  to  impress  me  as  men  of  strong  convictions,  or 
as  having  a  particular  call  to  break  the  bread  of  life  to 
hungering  souls.  Bad  logic  and  sectarian  sophisms  in 
the  pulpit  have  unquestionably  a  tendency  to  encourage 
a  propensity  to  question  the  truth  of  everything  that 
comes  from  the  same  fountain.  They  certainly  had 
that  effect  upon  me.  Besides,  young  men  always  ex- 
perience more  or  less  satisfaction  in  detecting  what 
they  suppose  to  be  the  errors  of  those  who  aspire  to  be 
thought  wiser  or  better  than  themselves.  So,  between 
vanity  and  honest  doubt,  I  fear  I  had  been  spending  more 
time  in  looking  up  what  I  considered  inconsistencies  in 
the  Word  than  in  searching  for  what  might  have  been 
useful  in  forming  my  character  and  in  directing  my 
daily  walk  and  conversation.  With  the  light  which 
the  pulpit  offered  me  in  those  days,  I  did  not  see  how 
God  could  have  loved  His  only-begotten  Son  less  than 
the  world,  which  was  under  His  condemnation  for  its 

20 


sins;  nor  how  the  wicked  could  be  any  better  fitted  for 
heaven  by  the  death  of  any  one,  and  especially  of  an  in- 
nocent person;  nor  how  God  could  derive  any  satisfac- 
tion from  the  suffering  of  His  innocent  offspring;  nor, 
if  Christ's  death  was  a  satisfaction  for  the  sins  of  the 
world,  why  any  sinner,  after  His  expiatory  death, 
should  suffer  or  be  called  to  account  for  any  sins  subse- 
quently committed.  His  redemption  having  been  duly 
purchased  and  paid  for;  nor  was  it  at  all  clear  to  me 
how  Christ's  death  could  be  the  infinite  sacrifice  it  was 
represented  to  be,  when  He  knew  He  was  to  rise  again 
three  days  after  His  crucifixion  and  resume  His  seat 
on  the  right  hand  of  the  Father.  I  was  accustomed 
from  my  earliest  youth  to  repeat  the  prayer  recom- 
mended by  our  Lord  as  a  model  to  His  disciples,  in 
which  the  Father  is  asked  to  lead  us  not  into  temptation. 
When  I  came  to  read  in  James  that  "God  cannot  be 
tempted  with  evil,  nor  tempteth  He  any  man,''  I  was 
puzzled  to  comprehend  the  propriety  of  this  invocation, 
which  virtually  reproached  God  with  doing  what  James 
gives  us  to  understand  it  would  be  sinful  even  to  sus- 
pect Him  of  doing. 

The  Mosaic  Cosmogony  also  bristled  with  difficulties. 
I  tried  in  vain  to  reconcile  the  indisputable  fact  that  the 
sun  is  the  source  of  all  light  on  our  planet,  with  the 
record  in  Genesis  that  the  creation  of  light  was  the  work 
of  the  first  day  of  creation,  vegetables  of  the  third,  while 
the  sun,  without  which  there  obviously  could  have  been 
neither  light  nor  vegetation,  was  not  created  until  the 
fourth  day.  And  how  could  the  days  have  mornings 
and  evenings,  as  they  are  reported  to  have  had,  before 
the  sun  was  created  ?    And  when  I  found  the  champions 

21 


of  the  Bible  pretending  to  have  reconciled  the  6,000- 
year-old  theory  of  creation  with  the  teachings  of  ge- 
ology, by  maintaining  that  the  "days"  of  creation,  as 
given  by  Moses,  meant  not  a  day  of  twenty- four  hours, 
but  an  indefinite  period  of  time — hundreds,  thousands, 
millions  of  years — I  not  unnaturally  inferred  that  they 
had  taken  refuge  in  a  greater  absurdity  than  the  one 
they  sought  to  avoid,  for  the  seventh  day  on  which 
*'God  rested  from  all  his  work  which  he  had  made,'' 
must  have  been  as  long  as  either  of  the  days  which 
preceded  it. 

This  taste  for  hunting  and  running  down  what 
seemed  to  me  incongruous,  inconsistent  or  inconsequen- 
tial passages  of  the  letter  of  the  Word  grew  by  what 
it  fed  on,  and  it  is  mortifying  and  painful  for  me 
now  to  think  how  blind  and  stupid  I  was  all  this 
time,  while  flattering  myself  that  I  was  profitably 
employed. 

About  1842,  and  soon  after  my  admission  to  the  bar, 
circumstances  threw  me  into  more  or  less  intimate  re- 
lations with  a  lawyer,  who  had  won  for  himself  con- 
siderable reputation  as  a  barrister.  He  subsequently 
held  one  of  the  highest  judicial  positions  in  the  State. 
He  was  twelve  or  fourteen  years  my  senior;  he  took  a 
fancy  to  me  for  reasons  I  do  not  yet  quite  understand ; 
perhaps  because  I  always  had  a  rather  uncommon  ca- 
pacity for  tolerating  the  eccentricities  and  peculiarities 
of  others,  for  we  had  very  little  in  common.  I  respected 
his  talents  and  manly  character,  I  enjoyed  his  conversa- 
tion, which  though  somewhat  critical,  not  to  say  cen- 
sorious, was  always  sparkling,  and  usually  instructive, 
at  least  to  one  who  was  so  much  his  junior.    We  had 

22 


lodgings  under  the  same  roof  and  took  our  meals  at  the 
same  hotels  for  many  years  and  until  he  married,  when 
I  served  as  one  of  his  groomsmen.  Before  coming  to 
New  York  to  reside  he  had  been  captivated  by  the 
teachings  then  novel  of  Gall  and  Spurzheim,  and  had 
been  one  of  several  gentlemen  who  united  in  inviting  Dr. 
Combe,  of  Edinburgh,  to  come  to  the  United  States  to 
expound  their  new  science.  He  adopted  the  views  of 
this  school  of  philosophers  unreservedly,  and  by  degrees 
he  drifted  so  far  toward  fatalism  as  to  deny  moral  ac- 
countability, rather  than  admit  that  a  man's  cranial  de- 
velopments, rather  than  his  will,  were  not  binding  upon, 
or  determinative  of,  his  conduct  and  character.  He  had 
not  been  brought  up  by  his  parents  to  entertain  any  rev- 
erence for  the  Bible  or  respect  for  the  Church  or  clergy, 
and  when  my  acquaintance  with  him  began,  he  was  ac- 
customed to  speak  of  the  sacred  volume  as  the  "razor 
strop,"  that  being,  according  to  his  view,  and  the  view 
of  many  of  his  early  friends,  the  most  useful  purpose  to 
which  they  had  seen  it  applied.  Though  destitute  of  any 
particle  of  reverence  for  the  Word,  and  though  he 
rarely  put  his  foot  inside  of  a  Church,  he  was  notably 
conscientious.  The  ethical  side  of  his  character  was  as 
fully  developed  on  the  natural  plane  as  in  any  person 
I  had  then  ever  met.  In  judging  men  or  conduct,  he 
habitually  looked  to  ethical  though  not  spiritual 
conditions  as  the  decisive  ones.  He  was  a  fine,  often  an 
eloquent  talker,  and  his  spectroscopic  methods  of  analyz- 
ing the  motives  of  human  conduct  were  new  to  me  then, 
and  in  some  respects  extremely  profitable.  Unhappily, 
with  them  he  did  much  to  quicken  into  new  life,  sus- 
picions that  had  been  slowly  germinating  in  my  mind, 

23 


that  what  I  failed  to  comprehend  in  the  Bible  was  a  de- 
fect in  it  instead  of  in  myself. 

This  suspicion  gained  upon  me  as  time  rolled  on, 
though  the  devastation  of  the  religious  notions  in  which 
I  had  been  trained  was  not  rapid.  I  could  not  name  any 
particular  event,  or  any  particular  time,  from  which 
my  faith  in  the  Revealed  Religion  began  consciously  to 
weaken;  nor  when  in  my  spiritual  horizon  the  sun  ac- 
tually stood  still  upon  Gibeon  and  the  moon  in  the  Val- 
ley of  Ajalon.  I  drifted  with  a  current,  the  force  and 
direction  of  which  never  attracted  my  attention  nor  oc- 
cupied my  thoughts  till  I  found  myself  approaching  the 
open  sea  of  disbelief. 

At  the  time  of  my  visit  to  St.  Thomas  I  suppose  I  had 
pretty  much  ceased  to  regard  the  Bible  as  possessing 
any  higher  sanction  than  the  writings  of  Marcus  Aure- 
lius  or  of  Confucius,  except  that  it  taught  a  loftier  and 
more  comprehensive  system  of  morals.  Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth I  regarded  as  one  of  the  best  of  men,  if  such  a  man 
ever  existed,  of  which  I  was  not  at  all  clear;  but  the 
method  of  His  incarnation,  His  miracles  and  resurrec- 
tion, I  sometimes  doubted.  I  inclined  to  class  them  with 
the  stories  of  Hercules  and  Theseus.  I  did  not  hesitate 
to  ask  myself,  "Is  not  this  the  carpenter,  the  son  of 
Mary,  the  brother  of  James  and  of  Judah  and  Simon?" 
If  I  attended  any  Church,  it  was  usually  that  of  Dr. 
Follen  or  Dr.  Dewey,  who  then  occupied  the  only  two 
Unitarian  pulpits  in  the  city,  where  I  repaired  for 
literary  rather  than  for  spiritual  refreshment. 

The  Old  Testament  I  regarded,  at  least  I  thought  I 
regarded,  pretty  much  as  Cobden  once  told  me  that  he 
regarded  it,  as  a  book  written  for  the  Jews  only,  but  not 

24 


for  us.  I  say  I  thought  I  so  regarded  it,  but  I  have  since 
doubted  whether  I  really  thought  much  about  it;  and 
whether  these  doubts  of  the  divine  origin  of  the  Word 
were  not  mere  surface  indications,  manifesting  them- 
selves during  a  period  of  rapid  physical  and  mental 
growth,  while  the  wiser  lessons  and  training  of  my  early 
youth  were  hibernating  in  the  heart  in  a  state  of  tem- 
porary torpidity;  for  even  in  those  days  I  could  never 
treat  my  Bible  with  neglect  or  disrespect,  nor  could  I 
hear  it  spoken  of  in  a  profane  way  without  an  unpleas- 
ant sensation.  Why  I  had  this  feeling  or  whence  it 
came,  I  had  then  no  suspicion,  and,  perhaps,  if  provoked 
to  explain  or  defend  it,  like  Peter  I  should  have  dis- 
owned it.  I  dare  say  that  in  this  respect  my  experience 
is  not  uncommon.  Bunyan,  in  his  "Grace  Abound- 
ing," reports  a  somewhat  similar  confirmation  of  the 
old  proverb  that  the  horse  that  drags  its  halter  is  not 
lost.  "This  I  well  remember,"  he  says,  "that  though  I 
could  myself  sin  with  the  greatest  delight  and  ease,  and 
also  take  pleasure  in  the  violence  of  my  companions; 
yet,  even  then,  if  I  had  at  any  time  seen  wicked  things 
in  those  who  professed  goodness,  it  would  make  my 
spirit  tremble.  And  once  above  all  the  rest,  when  I  was 
in  the  height  of  vanity,  yet  hearing  one  swear  that  was 
reported  for  a  religious  man,  it  had  so  great  a  shock 
upon  my  spirit  that  it  made  my  heart  ache." 

With  all  my  critical  difficulties  I  still  found  the  Bible 
about  the  most  interesting  book  in  my  library,  nor  had 
I  any  other  book  to  which  I  so  frequently  turned  for 
entertainment,  even  after  I  had  ceased  to  turn  to  it  for 
any  better  purpose.  As  Herod  feared  John,  knowing 
that  he  was  just  and  holy,  and  heard  him  gladly,  so  I 

25 


must  have  feared  the  Word,  knowing  that  it  was  just 
and  so  far  holy,  and,  despite  my  Pyrrhonism,  I  read  it, 
though  perhaps  with  only  a  pagan's  interest. 

Ill 

W^  will  now  return  to  the  dining  hall  of  the  hotel  of 
St.  Thomas.  I  have  said  that  I  was  reading  the  Bible. 
I  had  read  everything  readable  that  I  had  brought  with 
me  from  home,  and  had  bought  and  read  everything 
readable  in  the  solitary  bookstore  at  St.  Thomas.  In  fact 
I  had  procured  from  it  a  copy  of  Macaulay's  History 
of  England  then  fresh  from  the  London  press,  and 
which,  in  my  then  starving  condition,  I  had  greedily  de- 
voured. I  had  done  the  island  thoroughly,  and  my 
Bible  was  all  that  was  left  upon  which  to  expend  my 
superfluity  of  leisure.  It  so  happened  that  I  was  read- 
ing the  1 2th  chapter  of  Genesis,  which  gives  the  account 
of  Abram  driven  by  a  famine  into  Egypt.  When  I  had 
finished  it  I  said  to  Mr.  Kjerulff,  'Is  it  not  extraordin- 
ary that  this  book  should  be  accepted  by  the  most  highly 
civilized  nations  of  the  earth  as  the  Word  of  God?  Just 
listen."  I  then  read  the  verses,  with  which  the  chapter 
to  which  I  have  referred  concludes,  in  which  the  pa- 
triarch passes  off  Sarah  his  wife  for  his  sister. 

"This  Abram,"  said  I,  "is  the  man  whom  it  is  pre- 
tended our  Father  in  Heaven  had  selected  from  all  the 
people  of  the  earth  as  most  deserving  of  His  favour; 
had  promised  to  make  of  him  a  great  nation;  to  bless; 
him ;  to  bless  them  that  bless  him ;  to  curse  them  that: 
curse  him,  and  that  in  him  all  the  families  of  the  earth 
should  be  blessed.    And  yet  almost  the  first  thing  we 

26 


hear  of  him  is  his  commanding  his  wife  to  tell  a  false- 
hood, which  inevitably  exposed  her  to  insult  and  de- 
gradation, apparently  for  the  sole  purpose  of  saving 
himself  from  apprehended,  but,  as  the  event  proved, 
imaginary  dangers.  Does  not  the  Egyptian,''  I  asked, 
''whom  the  Bible  represents  as  the  oppressor  of  God's 
people,  appear,  according  to  our  standards  at  least,  to 
have  been  the  better  man  of  the  two?'' 

"Well,  yes,"  replied  Mr.  Kjerulff,  "it  does  appear  so 
at  first." 

"But,"  said  I,  "does  it  not  appear  so  all  the  time?" 
Mr.  Kjerulff  seemed  rather  to  avoid  a  direct  answer 
to  my  question,  and  in  turn  asked  me  if  I  had  ever  read 
any  of  the  writings  of  Swedenborg.  I  said  that  I  could 
not  say  that  I  had,  that  a  friend  had  once  lent  me  a 
treatise  on  "Conjugal  Love"  when  I  was  a  law  student, 
but  I  then  considered  my  friend*  something  of  a  crank, 
and  his  recommendation  of  a  book,  therefore,  did  not 
help  it  much  to  my  favor ;  besides,  I  was  not  at  the  time 
interested,  nor  possibly  capable  of  being  interested,  in 
the  subject  of  which  it  treated,  so  that  I  had  no  recollec- 
tion of  anything  I  read  in  it,  which  at  most  could  not 
have  been  much.  "Well,"  said  Mr.  Kjerulff,  "in  his 
Arcana  Coolestia,  Swedenborg  has  given  an  exposition 
of  the  chapter  you  have  been  reading,  which,  perhaps, 
would  satisfy  you  that  there  is  more  in  it  than  you  seem 
to  suspect."  I  intimated  mildly  that  there  was  no  ob- 
scurity about  the  meaning,  and  that  I  did  not  see  how 
any  one  could  get  any  impression  of  those  verses  dif- 

*  This  was  Dr.  Hemphill,  a  learned  young  German,  who  sub- 
sequently became  a  physician  of  the  Homoeopathic  School  and 
author  of  some  valuable  works  on  Homoeopathic  Science. 

27 


ferent  from  mine.  Mr.  Kjerulff  then  went  on  to  ex- 
plain something  about  an  interior  meaning  and  spiritual 
correspondence,  etc.  Failing  entirely  to  understand 
what  he  was  talking  about,  I  asked  him  if  he  had  the 
work  to  which  he  referred.  He  said  he  had  it  some- 
where, but  he  was  not  sure  that  he  had  it  with  him  in 
his  luggage  at  the  hotel;  he  would  see.  He  left  the 
room  and  after  a  little  returned  with  the  first  volume  of 
the  Arcana  Coolestia,  which  contained,  as  I  found  on 
examination,  Swedenborg's  exposition  of  the  verses  of 
which  we  had  been  speaking.  I  first  read  the  title,  which 
ran  as  follows: 

Arcana  Coelestia — The  Heavenly  Arcana  contained 
in  the  Holy  Scriptures  or  Word  of  the  Lord  unfolded, 
beginning  with  the  hook  of  Genesis,  together  with 
wonderful  things  seen  in  the  World  of  Spirits  and  in 
the  Heaven  of  Angels.  Translated  from  the  Latin 
of  Bmanuel  Swedenborg, 

I  then  looked  for  a  preface,  the  part  of  a  book  which 
usually  first  engages  my  attention,  but  found  none.  On 
the  first  page  of  the  text,  however,  I  found  what  was 
a  partial  substitute  for  one.    It  read  as  follows : 

the:  book   01^  GDNKSIS. 

I.  That  the  Word  of  the  Old  Testament  includes 
arcana  of  heaven,  and  that  all  its  contents,  to  every 
particular,  regard  the  Lord,  His  heaven,  the  Church, 
Faith,  and  the  things  relating  to  faith,  no  man  can 
conceive  who  only  views  it  from  the  letter.  For  the 
letter,  or  literal  sense,  suggests  only  such  things  as 
respect  the  externals  of  the  Jewish  Church,  whereas, 
it  everywhere  contains  internal  things  which  do  not 
in  the  least  appear  in  those  externals,  except  in  a  very 

28 


few  cases,  where  the  Lord  revealed  and  unfolded 
them  to  the  Apostles — as  that  sacrifices  are  significa- 
tive of  the  Lord,  and  that  the  Land  of  Canaan  and 
Jerusalem  are  significative  of  heaven,  on  which  ac- 
count they  are  called  the  Heavenly  Canaan  and  Jeru- 
salem— and  that  Paradise  has  a  like  signification. 

2.  But  that  all  and  every  part  of  its  contents,  even 
to  the  most  minute,  not  excepting  the  smallest  jot 
and  tittle,  signify  and  involve  spiritual  and  celestial 
things,  is  a  truth  to  this  day  deeply  hidden  from  the 
Christian  world;  in  consequence  of  which,  little  at- 
tention is  paid  to  the  Old  Testament.  This  truth, 
however,  might  appear  plainly  from  this  single  cir- 
cumstance; that  the  Word,  being  of  the  Lord,  could 
not  possibly  be  given  without  containing  interiorly 
such  things  as  relate  to  Heaven,  to  the  Church,  and  to 
Faith.  For  if  this  be  denied,  how  can  it  be  called  the 
Word  of  the  Lord  or  be  said  to  have  any  life  in  it? 
For  whence  is  its  life?  that  is  except  from  hence,  that 
all  things  in  it,  both  generally  and  particularly,  have 
relation  to  the  Lord,  who  is  the  very  life  itself? 
Wherefore,  whatsoever  does  not  interiorly  regard 
Him  does  not  live ;  nay,  whatsoever  expression  in  the 
Word  does  not  involve  Him,  or  in  its  measure  relate 
to  Him,  is  not  divine. 

3.  Without  such  a  living  principle,  the  Word,  as 
to  the  letter,  is  dead.  For  it  is  with  the  Word  as  with 
man,  who,  as  all  Christians  are  taught  to  believe, 
consists  of  two  parts,  an  external  and  an  internal. 
The  external  man,  separate  from  the  internal,  is  the 
body,  which  in  such  a  state  of  separation  is  dead ;  but 
the  internal  man  is  the  Lord,  and  the  Word  as  to  the 
letter  alone  is  like  a  body  without  a  soul. 

4.  It  is  impossible,  whilst  the  mind  abides  in  a 
literal  sense  only,  to  see  that  it  is  full  of  such  spiritual 
contents.  Thus  in  these  first  chapters  of  Genesis, 
nothing  is  discoverable  from  the  literal  sense,  but 

29 


that  they  treat  of  the  creation  of  the  world  and  of  the 
Garden  of  Eden,  which  is  called  Paradise,  and  also  of 
Adam  as  the  first-created  man ;  and  scarcely  a  single 
person  supposes  them  to  relate  to  anything  besides. 
But  that  they  contain  arcana,  which  were  never  here- 
tofore revealed,  will  sufficiently  appear  from  the 
following  pages,  where  it  will  be  seen  that  the  first 
chapter  of  Genesis,  in  its  internal  sense,  treats  of  the 
re-creation  of  man,  or  of  his  regeneration  in  general 
and  specifically  of  the  Most  Ancient  Church ;  and  this 
in  such  a  manner  that  there  is  not  a  syllable  which 
does  not  represent,  signify  and  involve  something 
spiritual. 

5.  That  this  is  really  the  case  in  regard  to  the 
Word,  it  is  impossible  for  any  mortal  to  know,  how- 
ever, except  from  the  Lord.  Wherefore,  it  is  expe- 
dient here  to  premise,  that,  of  the  Lord's  divine 
mercy,  it  has  been  granted  me,  now  for  several  years, 
to  be  constantly  and  uninterruptedly  in  company  with 
spirits  and  angels,  hearing  them  converse  with  each 
other  and  conversing  with  them.  Hence,  it  had  been 
permitted  me  to  hear  and  see  things  in  another  life 
which  are  astonishing  and  which  have  never  before 
come  to  the  knowledge  of  any  man  nor  entered  into 
his  imagination.  I  have  there  been  instructed  con- 
cerning different  kinds  of  spirits  and  the  state  of  souls 
after  death;  concerning  hell,  or  the  lamentable  state 
of  the  unfaithful;  concerning  heaven,  or  the  most 
happy  state  of  the  faithful;  and,  particularly,  con- 
cerning the  doctrine  of  faith,  which  is  acknowledged 
throughout  all  heaven,  on  which  subjects,  by  the 
divine  mercy  of  the  Lord,  more  will  be  said  in  the 
following  pages. 

Having  perused  these  introductory  paragraphs,  I 
turned  to  chapter  12  to  see  what  the  privileged  Swede 
had  to  say  in  behalf  of  Abram.     After  reciting  the 

30 


chapter  at  length,  he  proceeded  to  give  what  was  en- 
titled "The  Internal  Sense/*  and  in  terms  which  were 
calculated  to  arrest  my  attention.    They  ran  as  follows  : 

1403.  From  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  as  far  as 
here,  or  rather  to  the  account  of  Heber,  the  narratives 
are  not  matters  of  true  history,  but  compositions  in 
the  form  of  history,  signifying,  in  the  internal  sense, 
things  celestial  and  spiritual.  In  this  and  the  follow- 
ing chapters  the  narratives  are  not  compositions  in 
the  form  of  history  merely,  but  matters  of  true  his- 
tory. These,  in  the  internal  sense,  equally  signify 
things  celestial  and  spiritual;  as  may  appear  from 
this  consideration  alone,  that  it  is  the  Word  of  the 
Lord. 

1404.  In  these  narratives,  which  are  matters  of 
true  history,  all  the  declarations  and  words,  and  each 
of  them  singly,  have,  in  the  internal  sense,  an  entirely 
different  signification  from  that  which  they  bear  in 
the  literal  sense;  and  the  historical  facts  themselves 
are  representative.  Abram,  who  is  first  treated  of, 
represents  in  general  the  Lord  and  in  particular  the 
celestial  man ;  Isaac,  who  is  afterwards  treated  of,  in 
like  manner  represents  in  general  the  Lord  and  in 
particular  the  spiritual  man.  Jacob,  also,  in  general 
represents  the  Lord,  and  in  particular  the  natural 
man.  Thus  they  represent  the  things  appertaining  to 
the  Lord,  to  His  Kingdom  and  to  His  Church. 

1405.  But  the  internal  sense  is  of  such  a  nature  as 
has  thus  far  been  clearly  shown,  that  in  it  all  things 
are  to  be  understood,  even  to  the  minutest  particulars, 
abstractly  from  the  letter,  and  just  as  if  the  letter  did 
not  exist ;  for  in  the  internal  sense  is  the  soul  and  life 
of  the  Word,  which  does  not  appear,  unless  the  literal 
sense  is  as  it  were  evanescent.  It  is  thus  that  the 
angels,  by  gift  from  the  Lord,  have  a  perception  of 
the  Word  when  it  is  read  by  man. 

31 


Then  follows  an  exposition  of  what  Swedenborg 
terms  the  interior  or  spiritual  meaning  of  each  verse,  I 
might  say  of  almost  every  word  of  each  verse  of  the 
chapter,  and  occupying  forty-five  broad  octavo  pages.  I 
could  not  make  much  out  of  his  exegesis;  but  I  was  a 
little  disappointed  in  one  respect.  Nothing  was  farther 
from  my  thoughts  than  to  suppose  that  in  this  book, 
written  over  a  hundred  years  ago,  of  which  I  had  never 
before  seen  a  copy,  and  to  which,  in  all  my  not  incon- 
siderable and  varied  reading  of  the  English  classics,  I 
had  rarely  seen  an  allusion,  I  should  find  anything 
that  could  change  or  in  the  least  modify  my  opinion  of 
Abram  or  of  the  Bible.  I  read  from  curiosity  merely, 
expecting  to  drop  the  book  as  soon  as  I  came  to  some- 
thing— and  I  did  not  in  the  least  doubt  I  soon  should — 
that  would  be  so  absurd,  or  improbable,  or  illogical,  as 
would  justify  me,  without  rudeness,  in  returning  the 
book  to  my  Danish  friend  with  thanks. 

Though  I  understood  but  imperfectly  what  I  read,  I 
did  not  find  what  I  was  looking  for;  I  found  nothing 
that  I  could  point  to  with  confidence  and  say,  ''There, 
you  see  your  man  Swedenborg  must  have  been  either 
a  fool  or  an  impostor,  if  not  both."  On  the  other  hand, 
I  did  find  several  curious  and  striking  things  which 
piqued  my  curiosity.  For  example,  his  opening  com- 
ments on  the  first  verse  of  the  chapter  showed  me  that 
at  least  I  was  following  a  thoughtful  guide.  I  had 
neither  heard  nor  read  anything  like  it  before. 

1408.  These,  and  the  subsequent  circumstances, 
historically  occurred  as  they  are  related;  but  still  the 
historical  facts  are  representative,  and  each  word  is 
significative.    The  case  is  the  same  in  all  the  histor- 

32 


ical  narratives  of  the  Word,  not  only  those  in  the 
books  of  Moses,  but  also  those  in  the  books  of  Joshua, 
of  Judges,  of  Samuel,  and  of  the  Kings.  In  all  these, 
nothing  is  apparent  but  a  mere  history ;  but  although 
history  is  related  in  the  literal  sense,  still  in  the 
internal  sense  are  heavenly  arcana,  which  lie  con- 
cealed within,  and  which  can  never  be  seen  so  long 
as  the  mind,  together  with  the  eye,  is  confined  to  the 
historical  relations,  nor  are  they  revealed  until  the 
mind  is  removed  from  the  literal  sense.  The  Word 
of  the  Lord  is  like  a  body  investing  a  living  soul. 
The  things  belonging  to  the  soul  do  not  impress 
whilst  the  mind  fixes  its  attention  only  on  corporeal 
objects,  insomuch  that  the  existence  of  the  soul  is 
scarcely  credited  and  still  less  its  immortality ;  but  no 
sooner  is  the  attention  of  the  mind  withdrawn  from 
things  corporeal  than  those  belonging  to  the  soul  and 
its  life  begin  to  appear.  This  is  the  reason,  not  only 
that  corporeal  things  must  die  before  man  can  be 
born  again,  or  be  regenerated,  but  also  that  the  body 
itself  must  die  before  man  can  be  admitted  into 
heaven  and  see  the  things  of  heaven.  So  it  is  with 
the  Word  of  the  Lord ;  its  corporeal  parts  are  the  con- 
tainers of  the  literal  sense,  whilst  the  sfttention  of  the 
mind  is  fixed  on  which,  the  internal  contents  do  not 
appear ;  but  when  the  former  become  as  it  were  dead, 
then  first  the  latter  are  presented  to  view.  Neverthe- 
less, the  things  appertaining  to  the  literal  sense  are 
like  the  things  in  the  body  of  man,  viz.:  like  the 
scientifics  appertaining  to  the  memory,  which  are  de- 
rived from  the  things  of  sense,  and  which  form 
common  vessels  containing  things  interior  or  internal. 
It  may,  hence,  be  known  that  the  vessels  are  one 
thing  and  the  essentials  contained  in  the  vessels 
another.  The  vessels  are  natural  things:  the  essen- 
tials contained  in  the  vessels  are  things  spiritual  and 
celestial.     Thus,  also,  the  historical  facts  related  in 

33 


the  Word,  and  all  the  particular  expressions  used  in 
the  Word,  are  common,  natural,  yea,  material  vessels, 
containing  in  them  things  spiritual  and  celestial,  and 
these  cannot  possibly  be  brought  to  view,  except  by 
the  internal  sense.  This  may  appear  to  every  one, 
solely  from  this  consideration,  that  many  things  in 
the  Word  are  spoken  according  to  appearances,  yea, 
according  to  the  fallacies  of  the  senses;  as  what  is 
said  that  the  Lord  is  angry,  that  He  punisheth,  that 
He  curseth,  that  He  killeth,  and  many  other  things  of 
a  like  nature;  when,  nevertheless,  the  internal  sense 
teaches  quite  the  contrary,  namely,  that  the  Lord 
cannot  possibly  be  angry  and  punish,  much  less  can 
He  curse  and  kill.  Still,  however,  to  those  who,  from 
simplicity  of  the  heart,  believe  the  Word  just  as  they 
comprehend  it  in  the  letter,  this  is  not  hurtful,  pro- 
vided they  live  in  charity.  The  reason  is  because  the 
Word  teaches  nothing  else  than  that  every  one  is  to 
live  in  charity  with  his  neighbor,  and  to  love  the  Lord 
above  all  things,  and  they  who  do  this,  have  the  inter- 
nal  contents  of  the  Word  mithin  themselves,  and  then 
the  fallacies  arising  from  the  literal  sense  are  easily 
dispelled. 

This  idea,  that  the  Word  had  degrees  of  significance 
which  varied  and  expanded  in  exact  proportion  to  the 
spirituality  of  a  man's  life,  was  one  that  had  never 
crossed  my  mind  before,  in  a  way  to  distinguish  the 
Bible  as  a  literature  from  Dante  or  Plato,  and  it  seemed 
to  me  as  though  there  might  perhaps  be  something  in  it ; 
but  what?  And  how  did  he  know,  and  where  were  the 
proofs?  Still  I  could  not  say,  "this  is  nonsense;  this  is 
unscriptural,"  though  the  distinction  made  between  the 
chapters  preceding  the  twelfth  and  those  following,  by 
which  it  was  claimed  that  the  narratives  of  the  first 

34 


eleven  chapters  of  the  Old  Testament,  embracing  the 
careers  of  Adam  and  Eve,  of  Cain  and  Abel,  the  deluge, 
the  building  of  the  tower  of  Babel,  etc.,  "were  not  mat- 
ters of  true  history,''  had  a  somewhat  heretical  not  to 
say  profane  ring.  I  was,  however,  so  pleased  to  find 
that  any  one  had  found  a  way  of  retaining  his  faith 
in  the  divine  origin  of  the  Bible,  without  being  obliged 
to  accept  its  account  of  the  creation  as  history,  that  I 
did  not  feel  like  having  Swedenborg  burned  as  a  heretic 
for  that.  In  spite  of  these  redeeming  features  in  his 
writings,  however,  I  did  not  in  the  least  despair  of 
bringing  him  to  the  stake  before  I  had  done  with  him.  I 
persuaded  myself  that  he  had  built  up  a  theosophy  from 
his  imagination,  and  I  knew  enough  to  know  that  no 
human  imagination  was  capable  of  producing  anything 
of  that  kind  that  would  not  bristle  with  weak  points, 
which  could  not  all  escape  the  penetration  of  even  so 
poor  a  theologian  as  I  was.  So  I  turned  to  other  places 
to  see  what  he  said,  for  example,  of  Abram's  subse- 
quent misrepresentation  to  Abimelech,  what  of  Isaac's 
repetition  of  the  same  fraud  in  Gerar ;  of  the  tower  of 
Babel ;  of  Hagar ;  of  Jacob  and  his  mother's  scheme  to 
defraud  Esau  of  his  birthright;  what  of  Jacob's  method 
of  enriching  himself  at  the  expense  of  his  father-in-law, 
♦Laban;  of  Rachel's  fib  to  her  father  about  the  images, 
and  so  on.  In  this  way  I  spent  the  entire  day,  I  looked 
through  the  whole  volume.  Much  of  it  was  too  mystical 
to  be  intelligible  to  me  then ;  but,  to  my  mortification,  it 
began  to  dawn  upon  me  that  it  was  unintelligible  to  me, 
much  for  the  same  reason  as  the  Mechanique  Celeste 
would  have  been.  While  I  ran  upon  many  things  that 
were  quite  new  to  me  and  seemed  wise,  I  did  not  find 

35 


anything  upon  which  I  could  move  to  put  the  author  out 
of  Court.  On  the  contrary,  the  desire  to  read  on,  grew 
by  what  it  fed  on,  and  begat  a  longing  to  know  some- 
thing of  the  author's  personality. 

When  Mr.  Kjerulff  came  in  to  dinner  that  evening,  I 
said  to  him  that  I  had  spent  the  day  with  his  friend 
Swedenborg,  but  that  the  value  of  what  I  had  read  de- 
pended so  largely  upon  the  tenor  of  his  life  and  the 
character  he  had  borne  in  the  flesh  that  I  felt  as  though, 
before  spending  any  more  time  upon  his  works,  I  would 
like  to  be  enlightened  on  these  points.  Mr.  Kjerulff, 
thereupon,  ran  over  the  prominent  events  of  Sweden- 
borg's  life  in  a  rather  enthusiastic  strain,  as  it  seemed  to 
me,  and  wound  up  by  assuring  me,  in  substance,  that  he 
doubted  if  in  the  history  of  our  race  another  man  could 
be  found,  who  had  ever  succeeded  in  delivering  himself 
more  completely  from  the  sway  of  the  World,  the  Flesh  • 
and  the  Devil.  I  asked  if  he  had  any  biography  of 
Swedenborg.  He  replied,  after  a  little  reflection,  that 
he  believed  he  had  in  his  luggage  a  collection  of  docu- 
ments relating  to  Swedenborg  compiled  by  a  Mr.  Bush, 
of  New  York,  where  he  said  I  would  find,  in  the  testi- 
mony of  Swedenborg's  contemporaries,  the  best  of 
evidence  in  regard  to  his  singular  purity  of  life,  his  con- 
spicuous elevation  of  character,  and  the  completeness  of 
his  consecration  to  the  service  of  the  Master.  I  asked 
if  the  Bush  to  whom  he  referred  was  the  professor  of 
Oriental  languages  in  the  New  York  University  and  a 
Presbyterian  clergyman,  who  had  written  commentaries 
on  the  Bible.  All  he  knew  about  his  antecedents  was 
that  he  had  been  a  clergyman,  though  of  what  denomina- 
tion he  did  not  recollect,  and  that  since  becoming  ac- 

36 


quainted  with  the  writings  of  Swedenborg  he  had  with- 
drawn from  it,  whichever  il  was,  and  was  then  settled 
as  pastor  of  the  New  Church  (Swedenborgian)  in 
Brooklyn.  As  I  had  long  known  Prof.  Bush,  and  es- 
teemed him  very  highly  for  his  eminence,  both  as  a 
scholar  and  as  a  Christian,  I  was  greatly  surprised  to 
learn  that  he  had  been  dabbling  in  heresy.  Of  one 
thing,  however,  I  was  quite  sure,  that  he  was  entirely 
incapable  of  lending  himself  to  any  sort  of  imposture, 
and  that  absolute  confidence  might  be  placed  in  the  good 
faith  of  anything  published  with  his  name  or  with  his 
sanction.  The  fact  that  he  had  so  far  separated  him- 
self from  the  Church  organization  in  which  he  had  been 
bred,  in  which  he  had  worked  with  distinction  as  pastor 
and  author  for  many  of  the  best  years  of  his  life,  and 
had  sacrificed  to  his  convictions  what  to  him  no  doubt 
seemed  and  was,  in  a  worldly  point  of  view,  his  all,  in- 
creased my  interest  in  his  book  and  its  hero.  So  I 
begged  Mr.  Kjerulff  to  let  me  see  it.  He  promptly 
complied  with  my  wishes.  The  book  was  entitled, 
''Documents  Concerning  Swedenborg,"  and  consisted 
chiefly  of  letters  and  publications  of  Swedenborg's  con- 
temporaries, showing  the  estimate  and  reasons  for  the 
estimate  in  which  he  was  held  by  them.  I  read 
the  book  almost  at  a  sitting.  My  first  feeling 
when  I  laid  it  down  was  of  mingled  surprise  and 
mortification  that  I  had  lived  till  then  in  such 
dense  ignorance  of  the  career  and  work  of  so  remark- 
able a  man,  at  once  so  great  and  so  good  as  Sweden- 
borg was  there  shown  to  have  been,  while  I  had  spent 
so  much  of  my  life  in  trying  to  make  myself  familiar 
with  the  lives  of  men,  who  were  unworthy  to  unloose  the 

37 


latchets  of  his  shoes.  Whatever  doubts  I  had  enter- 
tained of  Swedenborg's  good  faith  and  sincerity,  this 
book  effectually  dispelled.  He  might  have  been  subject 
to  illusions,  but  I  had  no  longer  any  suspicions  of  his 
being  an  impostor.  These  convictions  naturally  in- 
creased my  curiosity  to  know  more  of  his  writings,  and 
especially  of  his  theology,  though  my  curiosity  was 
still  of  a  purely  intellectual  origin  and  character. 


IV 

Though  getting  to  be  somewhat  absorbed  by  this 
new  acquaintance,  I  did  not  forget  that  I  was  a  long  way 
from  home;  that  the  time  I  had  proposed  to  be  absent 
had  already  expired;  that  I  had  not  heard  either  from 
my  family  or  from  my  business  colleagues  since  I  left 
New  York,  nor  had  I  any  reason  to  presume  they  had 
heard  from  me.  Mr.  Kjerulff  and  I  had  studied  up  the 
destination  and  plans  of  every  vessel  in  the  harbor  of 
St.  Thomas  to  no  profit,  till  at  last  we  opened  negotia- 
tions with  a  skipper  in  command  of  a  fore  and  aft 
schooner  of  130  tons  or  thereabouts,  owned  in  Balti- 
more, to  take  us  to  some  port  in  the  United  States.  As 
he  could  get  no  freight,  for  which  he  had  been  hoping, 
from  or  to  any  Spanish  port,  on  account  of  the  cholera, 
he  finally  decided,  if  we  would  take  passage  with  him, 
to  go  to  New  Orleans  and  look  for  a  freight  there.  An 
arrangement  with  him  was  concluded;  we  laid  in  a 
stock  of  extra  provisions,  and,  with  more  alacrity  than  I 
ever  left  any  port  before  or  since  save  one,  we  took 
leave  of  St.  Thomas  bound  for  New  Orleans.  Before 
sailing,  however,  I  begged  Mr.  Kjerulff  to  take  with 

38 


him  all  the  books  he  had  by  or  about  Swedenborg.    With 
this  request  he  very  obligingly  complied. 

Our  voyage  was  prolonged  both  by  calms  and  storms, 
and  more  than  twenty  days  elapsed  between  the  time  of 
our  departure  from  St.  Thomas  and  my  arrival  at  New 
York.  I  do  not  recollect  but  one  day  in  all  that  interval 
— a  day  that  I  spent  in  New  Orleans,  where  the  editor 
of  the  Picayune  drove  me  out  to  Lake  Ponchartrain — 
that  I  did  not  pore  from  ten  to  twelve  hours  over  these 
writings.  In  fact,  they  absorbed  all  my  time  that  was 
not  devoted  to  eating  and  sleeping.  It  would  not  be 
possible  to  convey  to  any  one,  who  had  not  had  a  similar 
experience,  the  effect  they  produced  upon  me,  the  almost 
insane  appetite  with  which  I  devoured  them,  the  com- 
plete revolution  that  they  wrought  in  all  my  opinions 
about  spiritual  matters,  and  especially  about  the  Bible. 
Though,  like  the  blind  man  in  the  gospel,  I  as  yet  only 
saw  men  as  trees  walking,  before  I  reached  home  I  had 
acquired  a  thorough  conviction  that  ''these  were  not 
the  words  of  him  who  hath  a  devil,"  and  that  Sweden- 
borg was  "a  scribe  instructed  unto  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven."  It  seemed  to  me  that  every  line  I  re;ad  re- 
moved some  difficulty,  cleared  up  some  doubt,  il- 
luminated some  mystery,  revealed  spiritual  wealth  in  the 
Word  of  which  before  I  had  no  conception.  If  I  had  be- 
come possessed  of  Aladdin's  lamp  or  had  discovered  a 
new  continent,  I  could  not  have  been  more  completely 
rapt,  more  wildly  intoxicated  with  my  acquisition.  I  felt 
literally  that  whereas  I  was  blind  now  I  saw ;  as  if  my 
eyes  had  opened  to  a  world  of  which  till  then  I  had  only 
seen  the  reflection  or  shadow.  Saul  of  Tarsus  could  not 
have  been  more  utterly  surprised  and  carried  away 

39 


when  "there  fell  from  his  eyes  as  it  had  been  scales  and 
he  received  sight  forthwith/'  than  I  was  as  my  mind 
was  opened  to  the  new  truths  which  were  revealed  to  me 
during  this  voyage.  Before  reaching  New  Orleans  I 
found  myself  on  my  knees,  exclaiming,  *Xord,  I  be- 
lieve, help  Thou  my  unbelief/'  The  terms  in  which  the 
Rev.  John  Clowes  described  the  impression  produced  on 
him  by  his  first  perusal  of  Swedenborg's  "True  Chris- 
tian Religion,''  .would  at  one  time  have  seemed  to  me 
rhapsodical  and  extravagant.  They  now  seem  to  me 
perfectly  natural  and  not  in  the  least  exaggerated.* 

*  The  Reverena  John  Clowes,  formerly  fellow  of  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Cambridge,  England,  was  the  Rector  of  St.  John's  church, 
Manchester,  for  sixty-two  years.  He  was  born  at  Manchester 
in  October,  1743,  and  died  the  28th  of  May,  1831.  He  says:  "It 
is  impossible  for  any  language  to  express  the  full  effect  wrought 
in  my  mind  by  the  perusal  of  this  wonderful  book.  Suffice  it, 
therefore,  to  observe  that  in  proceeding  from  the  chapter  on  the 
Creator  and  Creation  to  the  succeeding  chapters  on  the  Re- 
deemer and  Redemption,  on  the  Divine  Trinity,  on  the  Sacred 
Scriptures  or  Word  of  God,  on  the  Decalogue,  on  Faith,  on 
Charity,  on  Free-will,  on  Repentance,  on  Reformation  and  Re- 
generation, on  Imputation,  on  Baptism,  on  the  Holy  Supper,  on 
the  Consummation  of  the  Age,  the  Advent  of  the  Lord,  and  the 
New  Heaven  and  the  New  Church,  it  seemed  as  if  a  continually 
increasing  blaze  of  new  and  recreating  light  was  poured  forth 
on  the  delighted  understanding,  opening  it  to  the  contemplation 
of  the  most  sublime  mysteries  of  wisdom,  and  convincing  it  of 
the  being  of  a  God,  of  the  existence  of  an  internal  world,  of  the 
interior  sanctities  of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  of  the  true  nature  of 
creation,  redemption  and  regeneration,  in  a  manner  and  degree, 
and  with  a  force  of  satisfactory  evidence,  in  which  those  inter- 
esting subjects  had  never  been  viewed  before.  The  mind, 
therefore,  was  no  longer  perplexed  about  the  proper  Object  of 
its  worship,  because  it  was  enlightened  to  see  clearly,  as  by  the 
light  of  a  meridian  sun,  that  Jesus  Christ,  in  His  Divine  Human- 
ity, is  that  Object,  He  being  the  Creator  from  eternity,  thus  con- 
taining in  His  own  Divine  Person  the  Sacred  Trinity  of  Father, 
Son  ^nd  Holy  Spirit ;  the  Father  being  His  hidden  essence,  the 
Son  His  manifested  existence,  and  the  Holy  Spirit  His  proceed- 
ing operation.  In  like  manner  all  difficulties  and  doubts  were 
removed  respecting  the   Sacred  Scriptures,  or  Word  of  God, 

40 


When  I  left  the  steamer  at  Cincinnati  to  take  the 
train  East  it  became  necessary  for  me  to  part  with  my 
good  friend  Kjerulfif*  and  his  books.  As  I  was  to  be 
detained  a  few  hours  in  Cincinnati,  I  lost  no  time  in 
looking  up  a  bookstore,  where  I  was  fortunate  enough 
to  find  a  nice  copy  of  Swedenborg's  Divine  Love  and 
Wisdom  and  of  Divine  Providence  bound  together. 
The  price  I  paid  for  it  led  me  to  suspect  that  it  was 
not  regarded  by  the  proprietor  as  very  valuable  mer- 
chandise, but  I  would  not  have  exchanged  it  for  any 
other  book  in  his  shop.  In  fact,  I  felt  then  as  though  I 
should  never  care  to  read  any  other  books  but  Sweden- 
borg's  and  the  Bible.  I  devoted  the  daylight  hours  dur- 
ing the  remainder  of  my  journey  to  my  new  treasure, 
every  line  of  which  seemed  to  set  a  new  star  in  the 
heavens  for  me.  By  the  time  I  reached  home,  though 
not  quite  clear  in  my  mind  about  the  nature  or  extent  of 
Swedenborg's  illumination,  if  specially  illuminated  at 
all,  nor  indeed  caring  much  to  know,  not  doubting  that 
he  believed  he  was,  I  had  got  over  not  only  all  my  dif- 
ficulties about  Christ's  mysterious  birth  and  miracles, 
but  I  had  become  equally  well  satisfied  of  the  Divine 

through  the  bright  and  heretofore  unseen  manifestation  of  their 
spiritual  and  interior  contents,  by  virtue  of  which  discovery 
apparent  inconsistencies  vanished,  apparent  contradictions  were 
reconciled,  and  what  before  seemed  trivial  and  nugatory,  as- 
sumed a  new  and  interesting  aspect;  while  the  whole  volume 
of  Revelation  was  seen  to  be  full  of  sanctity,  of  wisdom  and  of 
love  from  its  Divine  Author,  and  also  to  be  in  perpetual  connec- 
tion with  that  Author,  who  is  its  inmost  soul — its  essential 
Spirit  and  Life." 

*  Mr.  Kjerulff  died  in  1874  in  the  island  of  Santa  Cruz, 
where  he  had  resumed  the  practice  of  his  profession.  Two 
daughters  survive  him.  A  letter  written  by  his  daughter  Rose, 
giving  an  account  of  her  father's  death,  will  be  found  on  page 
117. 

41 


authority  of  the  twelve  chapters  of  Genesis  over  which 
I  had  so  often  stumbled.  If  there  were  any  parts  of  the 
Bible  about  the  Divine  origin  of  which  I  was  less  clear, 
I  presumed  they  were  given  for  our  edification,  but 
upon  what  precise  authority  I  did  not  pretend  to  know, 
nor  then  much  care.  I  felt  like  one  who  had  sold  all  he 
had  and  bought  a  pearl  of  great  price,  but  at  such  a 
bargain  that  he  did  not  care  to  wait  for  his  change. 

I  embraced  an  early  opportunity,  upon  my  return, 
to  look  up  Dr.  Bush.  I  found  him  where  I  had  occa- 
sionally seen  him  before,  in  what  he  called  his  "den,"  a 
small  room  in  the  upper  part  of  the  Morse  Building, 
since  replaced  by  a  more  imposing  structure  bearing  the 
same  name.  The  room  was  nearly  full  of  books.  He 
had  reserved  a  place  for  himself  at  his  desk  and  scant 
room  besides  to  seat  a  visitor  or  two.  I  was  much  in- 
terested, of  course,  in  hearing  from  his  own  lips  of  the 
revolution  through  which  he  had  passed.  He  seemed 
very  happy  and  well  assured  that  he  had  found  "the 
Way,  the  Truth  and  the  Life."  It  turned  out  that  he 
had  already  for  several  years  had  the  advantage  of 
Swedenborg's  teachings.  In  a  little  pamphlet  which  he 
published  about  1845,  entitled,  "Statement  of  Reasons 
for  Embracing  the  Doctrines  and  Disclosures  of  Swe- 
denborg,"  he  had  given  an  interesting  account  of  the 
circumstances  which  first  turned  his  studies  specially  in 
that  direction.  As  the  "Statement"  is  now  pretty  much 
forgotten,  and  as  the  journey  his  mind  travelled,  the 
difficulties  he  encountered  and  the  processes  by  which  he 
surmounted  them  were  in  many  respects  similar  to  my 
own,  and  I  suspect  of  most  persons  who  have  found  in 
Swedenborg,  as  he  had  done,  deliverance  from  spiritual 

42 


disorders  for  which  the  Church,  in  which  we  had  been 
reared,  had  neither  cure  nor  anodyne,  I  cannot  doubt 
that  those  who  have  followed  me  thus  far  will  be  edified 
by  it. 

"In  the  retrospect  of  the  last  five  or  six  years  of 
my  moral  and  intellectual  life,  I  am  compelled  to  fix 
upon  the  date  when  I  was  first  led  to  question  the  re- 
ceived doctrine  of  the  Resurrection,  as  the  point  from 
which  my  progress  really  began  to  tend  towards 
the  New  Church,  although  then  profoundly  ignorant 
of  the  fact.  I  had  previously  acquired  no  precise 
knowledge  of  Swedenborg's  system,  nor  formed  any 
intelligent  estimate  of  his  character.  With  the  mass 
of  the  Christian  world,  I  had  contented  myself  with 
the  vague  impression  of  his  having  been  a  man  of  re- 
spectable talents  and  attainments,  but  who  had  un- 
happily fallen  into  a  kind  of  monomania,  which  made 
him  the  victim  of  strange  delusions  and  dreams — the 
honest  but  real  dupe  of  the  wildest  phantasies  in  re- 
spect to  the  state  of  man  after  death,  and  the  constit- 
uent nature  of  Heaven  and  Hell.  As  to  anything  like 
a  consistent  or  rational  philosophy  of  man's  nature 
or  the  constitution  of  the  universe,  I  should  as  soon 
have  looked  for  it  in  the  Koran  of  Mahomet  or  the 
Vedas  of  the  Hindoos,  or  what  I  then  deemed  the 
senseless  ravings  of  Jacob  Behmen.  Having  never 
read  his  works  but  in  fragmentary  extracts,  I  was 
unprepared  to  recognize  in  him  anything  beyond  the 
character  of  a  well-meaning  mystic,  who  had  given 
forth  to  the  world  a  strange  medley  of  hallucinations 
that  could  never  be  supposed  to  meet  with  acceptance, 
except  in  minds  which  had  received  some  touch  of 
a  similar  mania,  and  which  had  lost,  if  they  ever  pos- 
sessed, the  power  of  accurately  discriminating  be- 
tween visions  and  verities.  Such  was  my  general 
estimate  of  the  man  up  to  the  time  when  I  had  become 

43 


settled  in  the  belief  that  the  current  dogma  of  the 
resurrection  of  the  material  body  was  a  gratuitous 
hypothesis,  equally  unsupported  by  a  sound  interpre- 
tation of  Scripture,  or  by  the  fair  inductions  of  rea- 
son. The  grounds  of  this  opinion  I  have  given  to  the 
public  in  a  work  ("Anastasis,  etc/')  expressly  de- 
voted to  the  subject. 

"1  had  already  begun  to  announce  my  conclusions 
on  this  head  in  a  course  of  public  lectures  delivered 
in  this  city  and  elsewhere,  maintaining  that  the  true 
resurrection  took  place  at  death,  when,  at  the  close  of 
one  of  these  lectures  in  an  eastern  city,  a  lady  inci- 
dentally remarked  to  me  that  the  views  I  had 
advanced  bore  a  striking  analogy  with  those  of 
Swedenborg  on  the  same  theme,  and  intimated  her 
impression  that  I  must  have  been  conversant  with  his 
works.  The  supposition  was  unfounded,  but  my  curi- 
osity was  excited,  and  I  determined,  at  the  first 
favorable  opportunity,  to  acquaint  myself  with  the 
system,  and  thus  supply  a  conscious  desideratum  in 
my  knowledge. 

"Not  many  months  elapsed  before  a  copy  of  Noble's 
Appeal  in  behalf  of  the  views  of  the  New  Church 
fell  into  my  hands,  by  the  perusal  of  which  I  was  very 
deeply  impressed.  I  was  compelled  to  form  an  entirely 
new  estimate  of  the  man  and  of  the  system.  I  not  only 
saw  my  own  general  views  of  the  nature  of  the  resur- 
rection abundantly  confirmed,  and  illustrated,  and 
planted  upon  the  basis  of  a  philosophy  and  psychology 
which  I  still  deem  impregnable,  but  an  exhibition  also 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  Lord's  Second  Advent,  which 
came  home  to  my  convictions  with  a  peculiar  power 
of  demonstration.  I  was  struck,  too,  in  the  perusal 
of  this  work,  with  the  Scriptural  character  of  the 
evidence  adduced  in  support  of  the  doctrines.  I  had 
previously  no  adequate  conception  of  the  amount  of 
testimony  from  this  source  going  to  sustain  the  lead- 

44 


ing  positions  of  the  New  Church  scheme,  and  to  this 
hour  I  do  not  scruple  to  regard  Noble's  Appeal  as  an 
unanswerable  defence  of  the  system. 

''Hitherto,  however,  I  had  read  nothing  of  Sweden- 
borg's  own  writings,  excepting  occasional  detached 
paragraphs.  The  'Heaven  and  HelV  shortly  after- 
wards fell  under  my  perusal.  I  read  it  with  profound 
interest,  but  still  with  great  abatements  from  a  full 
conviction  of  its  truth.  I  was  rather  disposed,  on  the 
whole,  to  admit  the  possibility  of  the  psychological 
state  into  which  Swedenborg  declared  himself  to  be 
brought,  and  which  alone  could  make  him  cognizant 
of  the  realities  of  the  spiritual  world,  because  I  saw 
that  a  similar  immission  into  that  world  had  been 
granted  to  the  prophets  and  apostles,  which  showed 
that  such  a  state  could  exist,  and  if  it  had  once 
existed,  I  saw  not  why  it  might  not  again, 
provided  sufficient  reasons  could  be  pleaded  for 
it ;  and  the  reasons  alleged  I  felt  to  be  sufficient  if  they 
were  but  sound;  a  question  that  I  felt  myself  willing 
seriously  to  consider,  but  which  I  think  the  mass  of 
the  Christian  world  is  not.  I  found,  however,  in  my 
perusal  of  the  work,  such  a  violence  done  to  all  my 
preconceptions  of  that  world,  that  I  doubted  exceed- 
ingly the  absolute  reliableness  of  his  statements.  I 
could  not  help  distrusting  the  lucidity  of  his  percep- 
tions. I  was  continually  haunted  by  the  suspicion  that 
his  preformed  ideas  on  the  subject  had  both  shaped 
and  colored  his  visions.  This  was  more  especially 
the  case  in  regard  to  his  descriptions  of  celestial  and 
infernal  scenery.  I  had  the  greatest  difficulty  imagin- 
able in  conceiving  the  possibility  that  any  objects  sim- 
ilar to  those  with  which  we  are  conversant  here 
should  even  appear  to  exist  there.  Again  and  again 
did  I  propose  to  myself  the  question.  What  kind  of 
an  entity  is  a  spiritual  house,  animal  or  bird — a  spirit- 
ual mountain,    garden,    grove,  or  tree — a    spiritual 

45 


cavern,  lake,  or  stream — not  dreaming  that  these 
things  exist  there  by  the  very  laws  of  the  human 
mind,  as  outbirths  or  emanations  of  the  interior  spirit, 
and  as  Hving  representatives  of  its  affections  and 
thoughts?  It  did  not  then  occur  to  me  that  a  spirit 
dislodged  from  the  body  must,  from  the  necessity  of 
the  case,  be  introduced  into  the  midst  of  spiritual 
realities,  and  that  these  cannot  in  the  nature  of  things 
be  any  other  than  what  Swedenborg  describes  them 
to  be — that  is,  they  must  be  what  we  should  term 
mental  creations  or  projections,  A  little  deeper  re- 
flection would  have  then  taught  me,  as  it  has  since 
done,  to  assent  freely  to  the  truth  of  Swedenborg's 
statement,  that  thoughts  are  actual  though  not 
material  substances,  and  that  to  spirits,  that  alone  can 
be  substantial  which  is  spiritual,  and  consequently 
that  alone  can  be  real.  We,  indeed,  in  common  par- 
lance, reverse  these  terms,  and  denominate  that  sub- 
stantial which  is  material,  and  which  comes  under 
the  cognizance  of  the  external  senses.  But  the  spirit, 
on  leaving  the  body,  leaves  the  region  of  dead  matter, 
and  comes  into  a  sphere  where  itself  and  its  emana- 
tions are  the  real  substances  or  the  substantial  reali- 
ties. Consequently,  what  is  here  subjective  becomes 
there  objective. 


"This  I  am  aware,  will  find  with  many  but  a  slow 
admission,  on  its  first  announcement,  from  their  hav- 
ing been  always  accustomed  to  regard  these  manifes- 
tations of  mind  as  simple  acts,  exercises,  operations, 
etc.  But  let  the  matter  be  pondered,  and  judgment 
rendered,  whether  the  fact  be  not  actually  so.  How 
can  anything  exist  which  is  not  a  substance?  How 
can  anything  that  exists  act,  but  by  the  putting  forth 
of  its  qualities  and  functions  as  a  substance?  The 
sun  acts  by  the  emission  of  its  light  and  heat.     Are 

46 


not  the  light  and  heat  of  the  sun  a  part  of  its  sub- 
stance^ A  flower  acts  by  sending  forth  a  sphere  of 
fragrance.  Is  not  the  fragrance  as  real  a  substance 
as  the  flower,  though  vastly  more  rarefied  and  ethe- 
real? So  of  the  human  spirit.  A  man's  thoughts  and 
mental  images  are  the  goings  forth  of  the  substance 
of  his  being;  they  are  as  substantial  as  his  being;  and 
if  a  spirit  himself  can  be  an  objective  reality  to  an- 
other spirit,  his  intellectual  conceptions,  for  the  same 
reason,  must  be  equally  objective.  Consequently, 
nothing  more  is  needed,  for  one's  being  introduced  in 
the  most  splendid  celestial  scenery,  than  to  find  him- 
self surrounded  by  the  mental  creations  prompted  by 
the  pure  and  angelic  affections  of  the  countless  multi- 
tudes which  constitute  that  kingdom.  These  must  be 
beautiful,  because  they  originate  in  a  moral  state  of 
the  inner  man,  which  can  only  be  represented  by  ob- 
jects of  a  corresponding  character;  and  that  they  are 
real,  arises  from  the  nature  and  necessity  of  the  case. 
Spiritual  objects  must  be  the  real  objects  to  a  spirit. 
The  infernal  scenery,  though  a  counterpart  to  this, 
depends  upon  the  same  law. 

"A  great  advance  was  accordingly  made  towards  a 
full  reception  of  the  disclosure  of  Swedenborg,  when 
the  objections  on  this  score  were  overcome.  I  saw 
that  here  was  a  rational  and  philosophical  theory  of 
the  dominant  conditions  of  the  other  life;  and  yet  it 
was  evidently  a  revelation  of  such  a  nature  as  to 
transcend  the  utmost  grasp  of  the  unassisted  human 
faculties.  The  inference,  therefore,  was  not  only  fair 
but  irresistible,  that  Swedenborg  was  brought  into  a 
preternatural  state,  in  order  to  his  being  enabled  to 
make  it;  and  the  admission  of  this  was  a  virtual  ad- 
mission of  the  main  item  of  his  claim — the  claim  of 
having  been  divinely  empowered  to  lay  open  the  veri- 
ties of  man's  future  existence,  and  the  essential 
nature  of  Heaven  and  Hell. 

47 


"This  primary  fact,  then,  having  been  established  to 
my  own  satisfaction,  I  was,  of  course,  very  strongly 
disposed  to  listen  with  the  deepest  respect  to  what- 
ever other  reports  he  brought  from  that  world  of  mys- 
tery and  of  marvel;  although  I  was  still  very  far — 
as  indeed  I  hope  ever  to  be — from  a  blind  surrender 
of  my  own  judgment,  as  to  every  point  of  his  an- 
nouncements. I  was  not  yet  prepared  to  receive  the 
distinctive  features  of  his  theology,  and  more  es- 
pecially was  I  stumbled  by  his  unsparing  critiques 
upon  the  doctrine  of  Justification  by  Faith  alone, 
which  I  had  been  taught  to  regard  as  the  grand  tenet 
established  by  the  Reformation,  and  which  I  supposed 
to  be  true,  of  course,  simply  from  its  having  been  the 
result  of  that  struggle,  which  is  so  often  spoken  of 
as  the  glorious  Reformation  from  the  errors  of 
Popery.  I  had  yet  to  learn  that  there  were  a  great 
many  things  in  the  Reformation  that  need  much 
further  reforming.  So  also  in  regard  to  the  peculiar 
views  advanced  respecting  the  true  nature  of  the 
Atonement,  from  which  the  current  doctrine  of  Justi- 
fication is  inseparable.  It  was  long  before  I  could  so 
entirely  emancipate  my  mind  from  traditional  senti- 
ments, as  to  embrace  fully  what  I  now  regard  as  the 
far  more  Scriptural  views  of  the  New  Church  on  that 
subject,  to  wit,  that  the  atonement  was  what  is  signi- 
fied by  the  word — reconciliation — God  reconciling  the 
world  to  Himself,  instead  of  reconciling  Himself  to 
the  world. 

"But  the  great  rock  of  offence  with  me  was  the  in- 
terior or  spiritual  sense  of  the  Word.  This,  I  was 
strongly  assured,  even  if  there  were  to  some  extent 
a  basis  of  truth  on  which  it  rested,  was  yet  carried 
to  an  entirely  fanciful  extreme  in  Swedenborg's  inter- 
pretations; and  I  had  scarcely  a  doubt  that  if  I  ever 
accepted  the  system  as  a  whole,  it  would  still  be  with 
a  reservation  on  this  score.     One  who  is  at  all  ac- 

48 


quainted  with  the  general  scheme,  will  see  at  once 
from  this,  that  I  had  thus  far  failed  to  apprehend  the 
true  genius  of  the  Science  of  Correspondences,  on 
which  it  rests,  and  from  which  it  flows  by  inevitable 
sequence.  The  truth  of  this  science,  however,  grad- 
ually loomed  up  more  and  more  to  view,  as  I  became 
more  clearly  aware  of  the  spiritual  nature  of  man, 
and  of  the  fundamental  fact,  that  all  natural  things 
are  pervaded,  acted,  moulded,  vivified  by  the  influx 
of  spiritual  causes." 

With  Dr.  Bush  I  afterward  had  many  pleasant  and 
edifying  talks.  I  promptly  procured  a  copy  of  the  "Ar- 
cana Coelestia,"  and,  as  I  felt  the  need  of  them,  the 
other  theological  writings  of  Swedenborg.  I  also  looked 
up  the  Church  frequented  chiefly  by  students  of  Sweden- 
borg in  Thirty-fifth  street,  in  which  the  Rev.  Chauncey 
Giles  was  then  preaching,  and  which  I  have  habitually 
attended  since  when  in  town. 


Highly  as  I  valued  Swedenborg  as  a  Commentator 
and  an  opener  of  the  Word,  I  was  not  as  yet  prepared 
to  accept  him  as  a  revelator.  Accustomed  to  regard  the 
Bible  as  a  unit  and  unique,  as  a  great  light  with  which 
God  had  endowed  His  people,  I  hesitated  to  believe  that 
His  revelations  could  be  incomplete,  or  could  ever  re- 
quire supplementation.  It  seemed  more  probable  that 
Swedenborg  had  read  the  Word  more  carefully,  had 
penetrated  its  mysteries  more  profoundly,  and  developed 
truths  equally  accessible  to  any  person  endowed  with 

49 


equal  genius  and  equally  free  from  sectarian  delusions 
and  moral  infirmities.  If  the  Word  required  the  light 
which  Swedenborg  professed  to  shed  upon  it,  why  was  it 
withheld  so  long,  and  why  had  not  preceding  genera- 
tions been  permitted  to  profit  by  it? 

This  question  reminds  one  of  an  Italian  who  wrote 
a  book  to  prove  that  the  four  new  planets  discovered 
by  Galileo  were  imaginary,  and  concluded  by  asking: 
"Of  what  use  are  they?  Astrologers  have  got  on  very 
well  without  these  new  planets  hitherto.  There  can  be 
no  reason,  therefore,  for  their  starting  into  existence 


now." 


I  ultimately  found  my  answer  where  any  earnest 
seeker  for  truth,  for  truth's  sake,  may  find  a  deliverance 
from  all  doubts  which  obstruct  his  spiritual  evolution — 
in  the  Bible  itself.  The  objection  to  a  new  revelation  in 
the  eighteenth  century  I  found,  could,  with  equal  pro- 
priety, be  made  to  the  revelations  made  by  our  Saviour 
and  by  John,  nay  by  Abraham,  by  Moses  and  by  all  the 
prophets.  Over  a  thousand  years  intervened  between 
the  inditing  of  the  Ten  Commandments  on  the  one  hand, 
and  the  prophecies  of  Malachi  on  the  other,  during 
which  interval  the  Lord  appears  to  have  been  in  fre- 
quent, not  to  say  constant,  commmunication  with  His 
people.  The  call  of  Abraham  occurred  B.  C.  1921.  The 
prophecies  of  Malachi  were  written  B.  C.  420.  During 
this  interval  of  more  than  fifteen  centuries  the  Bible 
records  over  fifty  distinct  revelations  of  the  Divine  Will 
to  as  many  different  persons  and  on  as  many  different 
occasions.  I  have  taken  the  trouble  to  prepare  a  list 
of  some  of  the  recipients  of  these  revelations,  with  a 
reference  to  the  text  where  they  are  recorded. 

50 


CHAP. 

To  Abraham See  Genesis,      15 


Isaac  . 
Jacob  . 
Joseph 


Moses 


Aaron  . 
Balaam 
Joshua 


Deborah 

Gideon  

Jephtha   

Manoah's  Wife 
Samson 


Samuel 
David  . 


Nathan 

Gad  (David's  Seer) 
Solomon    


A  man  of  God 

Jehu 

Micaiah 

Elijah 

Elisha 

Isaiah 

Huldah  the  Prophetess 

Nathan 

Azariah 

Shemaiah 

51 


It 
it 
it 

it 
it 
(t 
i( 

n 
t( 
ti 
t( 
it 
t( 
t( 
ti 
it 
it 
ti 
ti 
it 
it 
ti 
ti 
it 
ti 
it 
it 
it 
it 
it 


Exodus, 

it 

it 
Num., 

a 

Joshua, 
it 

Judges, 


1  Sam'l, 

n 

2  Sam'l, 

it 
it 

I  Kings, 


2  Kings, 


1  Chron. 

2  Chron. 


26 
28 

35 

45 
46 

3 
6 

20 
18 

24 

I 

10 

4 

6 

II 

13 

13 

15 

3 

23 

2 

12 
24 

3 

9 

13 

16 

22 

17 
2 

10 

22 

17 

15 
12 


VERSfi. 

I 

2 
13 

1.9 

5.7.9 

2.3 

4.5 
2-8 

1-2 

1.8 

4 

I 

12-14 

4 
11,25 

29 
3,9 
25 
19 
10 
10 
I 

1.7 
10, 12 

5 

3 
I 

I 

19 
2 

21 

10 

15 

3 

1-8 

5 


29. 

30. 
31- 
32. 

33- 

34- 

35- 
36. 
Z7- 
38. 

39- 
40. 

41. 
42. 

43- 

44. 

45- 
46. 

47- 
48. 
49. 
50. 

SI- 


To 


Jahaziel See 

Zechariah " 

Haggai    " 

Ezra " 


The  man  of  God  that 
came  to  Amaziah  . . . 

Prophet  sent  to  Ama- 
ziah   

Jeremiah   

Nehemiah   

Esther  

Job  

Ezekiel 

Daniel    

Hosea 

Joel 

Amos 

Obadiah 

Jonah  

Micah 

Nahum 

Habakkuk  

Zephaniah 

Malachi 

Haggai    

Iddo 


CHAP.      VERSE. 

2  Chron.,    20  14 

"            24  20 

Ezra,            5  I 

6  14 

7  6 

25  7 


2  Chron.,    25         15 

Jeremiah,      i 

Nehemiah,    i 

Esther. 

Job,  38 

Ezekiel,         i 

Daniel. 

Hosea,  i 

Joel  I 

Amos,  I 

Obadiah        i 

Jonah,  I 

Micah,  I 

Nahum. 

Habak., 

Zeph., 

Malachi, 

Haggai, 


To  these  may  be  added  the  Psalms,  in  which  Jesus  is 
often  the  speaker.  These  poems,  too,  are  the  work  of 
several  inspired  authors,  and  appeared  not  at  one  time, 
but  at  intervals  covering  a  period  of  not  less  than  a 
thousand  years. 

The  New  Testament  equally  presents  a  succession  of 

52 


revelations,  made  to  as  many  different  persons  and  at 
different  times.    Here  is  a  list  of  some  of  them: 


I. 

r. 

2. 

(( 

tt 

3- 

a 

4- 

(( 

5- 

(( 

6. 

a 

7- 

(( 

8. 

(< 

9- 

it 

lO. 

(C 

II. 

(( 

12. 

i( 

13- 

(( 

14- 

{( 

15- 

a 

i6. 

t( 

17- 

it 

i8. 

a 

19. 

a 

CHAP.      VERSE. 

Joseph    See  Matthew,      i         20 

John  the  Baptist "         "  3         15 

"         "  2         14 

Simon  Peter "         " 

Andrew " 

James " 

John    the    son   of    Zeb- 

edee " 

Philip "         "  10  2 

Bartholomew " 

Thomas " 

James " 

Thaddeus  " 

Simon  the  Canaanite. . .  "         " 

Judas  Iscariot "         " 

Paul "    Acts,  9  6 

Philip "         "  .  8        26 

Mark "    Mark. 

Luke "    Luke. 

Stephen   "    Acts,  7        55 

John  the  Divine "    Revelation. 


Here  we  have  in  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  to- 
gether no  less  than  seventy  different  revelations  made 
by  the  Lord  to  almost  as  many  different  persons  and 
on  almost  as  many  different  occasions,  within  a  period 
of  sixteen  hundred  years.  What  reason  was  there  for 
supposing  that  John,  any  more  than  Malachi,  or  than 
Isaiah,  or  than  Solomon,  or  than  David,  or  than  Joshua, 
or  than  Abraham,  or  than  Moses,  was  to  be  the  last  to 
whom  He  would  reveal  Himself?     And  would  it  not 

53 


have  seemed,  reasoning  from  the  past,  more  surprising, 
had  He  not  made  any  farther  revelation  of  Himself  in 
the  next  seventeen  centuries  than  that  He  did?  What 
did  He  mean  when  He  said  to  His  disciples,  "I  have 
many  things  to  say  unto  you,  but  ye  cannot  bear  them 
now,"  if  not  that  when  His  disciples  were  fit  to  know 
more  of  righteousness,  temperance  and  judgment  to 
come,  more  would  be  revealed  to  them — that  they  would 
hear  from  Him  again? 

As  for  the  agent  through  whom  to  make  new  revela- 
tions, I  had  no  difficulty  in  acknowledging  the  entire 
sufficiency  and  fitness  of  Swedenborg,  nor  does  my 
memory  suggest  the  name  of  any  one  man  who  lived 
before  or  since  the  time  of  Jesus  more  thoroughly 
equipped  for  such  an  extraordinary  commission ;  of  any 
medium  through  which  the  light  of  Divine  truth  would 
pass  with  less  refraction.  It  is  not  possible  to  find  any 
authority  for  supposing  that  any  of  those  who  had  been 
previously  selected  by  the  Lord  as  such  media  possessed 
any  qualifications  for  their  mission  which,  mutatis  mu- 
tandis, Swedenborg  did  not  possess  for  his,  while,  hu- 
manly speaking,  it  is  doing  none  of  the  others  any 
injustice  to  say  that  for  his  peculiar  mission  he  possessed 
many  qualifications  which  all  the  others  presumably 
lacked.  At  his  maturity,  he  was  the  most  illustrious 
scientific  man  living.  He  consecrated  his  extraordinary 
talents  to  the  loftiest  and  most  elevating  uses.  He  was 
a  favorite  of  his  king  because  of  his  usefulness;  there 
were  hardly  any  worldly  honors  or  political  distinctions 
he  did  not  receive,  to  which  he  might  not  have  aspired. 
He  laid  them  all  down  to  devote  himself  exclusively  to 
the  work  to  which  he  believed  the  Lord  had  called  him, 

54 


neither  receiving  nor  desiring  any  reward  from  the 
world  for  his  labors  or  his  sacrifices.  He  not  only  print- 
ed all  his  books  at  his  private  expense,  but  as  fast  as 
printed  gave  them  all  away,  mostly  to  libraries,  to  await 
the  time  when  the  world  should  realize  its  need  of  them, 
having  implicit  faith  that  the  Lord  would  in  His  own 
good  time  breathe  into  them  the  breath  of  life.* 

I  had  no  longer  any  difficulty  therefore  with  what  at 
first  seemed  like  an  impeachment  of  the  completeness 
and  sufficiency  of  the  Bible,  and  I  came  to  regard  every 
revelation  of  spiritual  truth,  from  Moses  down  the 
ages,  as  merely  successive  liftings  of  veils,  the  dispers- 
ing of  clouds,  for  the  revelation  of  vital  truths  of  which 
all  nature  is  the  Divine  Scripture,  and  the  Bible  its 
translation  and  interpreter,  but  which  the  children  of 
men  are  prepared  to  accept  only,  as  it  were,  by  instal- 
ments. Neither  had  I  any  farther  difficulty  in  regarding 
Swedenborg  as  a  suitable  agent  for  the  reception  of  a 
new  revelation,  as  much  so  as  any  of  the  tw^elve  Apostles 
appear  to  have  been. 

*  Concerning  Volume  I,  John  Lewis  states  in  Document  258, 
p.  494,  "This  gentleman  (i.  e.  Swedenborg)  with  indefatigable 
pains  and  labour  spent  one  whole  year  in  studying  and  writing 
the  first  volume  of  the  Arcana  Ccelestia;  was  at  the  expense  of 
two  hundred  pounds  to  print  it,  and  also  advanced  two  hundred 
pounds  more  for  the  printing  of  the  second  volume;  and  when 
he  had  done  this,  he  gave  express  orders,  that  all  the  money 
that  should  arise  in  the  sale  of  this  large  work  should  be  given 
toward  the  charge  of  the  propagation  of  the  gospel."  He  was 
as  indifferent  about  the  fame,  as  about  the  pecuniary  returns 
his  book  would  yield.  The  first  public  notice  of  the  Arcana 
Ccelestia  and  of  five  other  treatises  published  in  1758,  appeared 
in  Sweden  in  1763,  thirteen  years  after  the  appearance  of  the 
first  volume  of  the  Arcana. 


55 


VI 


In  the  perusal  of  these  pages  it  will  doubtless  occur 
to  the  reacfer  to  ask  what,  after  all,  did  I  learn  from 
Swedenborg  of  substantial  value,  that  I  did  not  know  or 
might  not  have  learned  from  the  pulpits  of  the  Churches 
open  to  me  in  New  York  ?  Especially  ndiat,  if  anything, 
to  which  I  can  attribute  the  great  change  wrought  in 
my  \aews  of  my  relations  to  the  Godhead  within  those 
few  short  weeks  ?  It  would  require  volumes  to  answer 
this  question  fully;  but  I  can  state  in  a  brief  space  some 
of  the  most  striking  and  comprehensive  truths  for 
which,  by  God's  mercy,  I  think  I  am  indebted  to  diese 
writings. 

First.  They  apprised  me  of  the  fact  that  I,  in  common 
with  most  professing  Christians,  had  been  all  my  life  a 
pagan,  beUeWng  or  acting  as  though  I  believed  in  a 
plurality  of  Gods.  While  at  school  in  Troy  and  after- 
wards at  Trinity  College,  Hartford — it  was  called 
Washington  College  in  my  time — I  had  been  required  to 
attend  the  Episcopal  Church,  and  ever}*  Stmday  to  re- 
peat what  is  termed  in  the  Prayer  Book,  The  Apostles' 
Creed,  in  which  I  proclaimed  my  behef  in — 

( 1 )  God  the  Father  Almight)-,  Maker  of  heaven  and 
earth. 

(2)  In  Jesus  Christ,  His  only  Son  our  Lord,  who  was 
conceived  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  bom  of  the  \'irgin  Mary, 
etc. 

(3)  In  the  Holy  Ghost 

(4)  In  the  Holy  Catholic  Church. 

56 


(5)  In  the  Communion  of  Saints. 

(6)  In  the  forgiveness  of  sins. 

(7)  In  the  resurrection  of  the  body. 

(8)  In  the  life  everlasting. 

Here  were  eight  separate  articles  of  belief,  including 
a  belief  in  at  least  three  separate  and  distinct  Gods, 
whom  I  was  educated  to  recognize,  and  to  whom  I  was 
to  address  my  prayers.  Jesus  Christ,  the  Son,  was  just 
as  distinct  from  the  Father  in  this  profession  of  faith  as 
the  Communion  of  Saints  was  distinct  from  the  forgive- 
ness of  sins,  or  from  the  resurrection  of  the  body.  The 
Holy  Ghost  was  apparently  a  third  person,  equally  dis- 
tinct from  both  the  Father  and  Son.  When  I  attempted 
to  pray  I  was  always  perplexed  to  know  which  of  the 
three  I  was  appealing  to  or  ought  to  address.  This 
difficulty  got  me  some  years  later  into  the  habit  for  a 
time,  of  attending  the  Unitarian  Church.  As  I  advanced 
in  life,  and  in  blindness  perhaps,  I  used  to  address  my 
petitions  to  God  the  Father,  closing  my  eyes,  as  it  were, 
to  the  other  two,  to  avoid  confusion. 

If  I  am  not  greatly  mistaken,  the  impression  generally 
prevails  among  what  are  called  orthodox  Christians, 
that  there  is  a  sort  of  graded  Godhead,  to  which  the 
Roman  Catholics  add  the  Virgin  Mary,  and  now  I  be- 
lieve the  Pope;  to  which  the  Greek  Church  adds  the 
Czar;  the  Moslems,  Mahomet,  and  the  Mormons,  Joe 
Smith.  I  am  indebted  to  Swedenborg  for  shewing  me 
the  way  out  of  this  polytheistical  tangle,  and  making 
perfectly  intelligible  to  me  the  great  central  truth  of 
Christian  faith,  that  there  is  but  one  God,  in  Whom,  as 
Swedenborg  describes  it,  there  is  a  trinity  of  person, 
not  of  persons;  that  Jesus  was  Jehovah  Himself  re- 

57 


vealed  to  us  in  the  measure  proportioned  to  our  needs 
and  capacities  for  receiving  Him,  just  as  the  Hght  and 
heat  which  enter  our  windows  are  the  sun  passed 
through  an  atmosphere  several  miles  deep  to  prevent 
their  blinding  or  burning  us.  In  this  way  I  compre- 
hended how  in  Christ  was  the  fullness  of  the  Godhead 
bodily ;  how  the  Father,  Son  and  Holy  Ghost  are  united 
in  the  One  Divine  Person  of  the  Saviour,  forming  One 
Divine  Being,  in  like  manner  as  the  soul,  body  and  their 
joint  operation  in  man,  form  one  human  being.* 

*  This  view  was  presented  very  effectively  by  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Clowes,  in  the  preface  to  his  Commentaries  on  Luke,  more  than 
half  a  century  ago.  ''When  it  is  said  of  the  Father  that  He 
created  the  world,  of  the  Son  that  He  redeemed  it,  and  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  that  He  sanctified  it,  and  when  these  three,  viz.,  the 
Father,  Son  and  Holy  Ghost,  are  called  distinct  persons,  and 
have  distinct  offices  allotted  to  them,  and  lay  claim  to  a  distinct 
worship,  what  is  the  necessary  result  of  all  these  distinctions 
but  to  establish  a  monstrous  tritheism,  fraught  with  the  most 
mischievous  consequences  by  its  direct  tendencies  to  distract 
the  mind  of  the  sincere  worshipper,  to  perplex  him  as  to  the 
proper  object  of  his  adoration,  since  it  is  absolutely  impossible 
for  the  human  mind  to  pay  its  debt  of  religious  gratitude,  love, 
praise  and  supplication  to  more  than  one  Divine  Being. 

"To  this  denial  of  the  Incarnate  God  of  the  sole  exclusive 
Divinity,  the  division  of  the  Godhead  into  three  persons  and  in 
the  allotment  of  a  distinct  office  and  operation  to  each  person — 
to  the  Father,  the  act  of  creation ;  to  the  Son,  the  act  of  redemp- 
tion; and  to  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  act  of  sanctification — may  be 
ascribed  an  incalculable  multitude  of  misconceptions  and  theo- 
logical delusions,  among  which  are  conspicuous  the  mistaken 
notions  of  an  imputed  righteousness,  of  an  arbitrary  election  on 
the  part  of  God,  of  justification  by  faith  alone,  of  salvation  by 
immediate  mercy.  In  what  Church  in  Christendom  are  its 
members  taught  even  to-day — save  the  New  Church — ^to  address 
their  prayers  directly  to  Jesus  Christ,  who  has  so  expressly 
said,  "Come  unto  Me;  abide  in  Me;  without  Me  ye  can  do 
nothing"?  (See,  also,  John  xiv.  6.)  In  what  Church  are  we 
taught  to  believe  the  Humanity  of  Jesus  Christ  to  be  a  Divine 
Humanity,  in  and  through  which  the  invisible  Godhead  is  made 
visible,  the  unknown  God  is  made  known,  the  unapproachable 
Godhead  is  rendered  approachable,  and  thus  the  penitent  sin- 

58 


Second.  I  first  learned  from  Swedenborg  that  the 
Atonement  was  not,  as  I  had  always  been  taught,  a 
reconciliation  of  God  with  the  world  through  a  barbar- 
ous and  unnatural  traffic  arrangement,  but  a  reconcilia- 
tion of  the  world  with  God;  an  at-one-ment  effected 
through  the  intervention  of  the  Lord's  Divine  Human- 
ity. If  the  Father  and  Son  really  were  one  person,  and 
the  unity  of  the  Godhead  assumed  that  they  were,  of 
course  neither  could  feel  any  resentment  towards  sin- 
ners not  equally  shared  by  the  other,  nor  could  either 
have  any  claims  of  justice  which  were  not  common  to 
both.  The  Son,  therefore,  could  not  but  feel  as  much 
wrath  towards  sinners  as  the  Father,  and  the  Father  as 
much  compassion  for  them  and  solicitude  for  their  sal- 
vation as  the  Son.  So  that  the  idea  of  crucifying  either 
to  satisfy  the  honour  of  the  other,  was  not  only  at  war 
with  any  rational  conception  of  God,  the  Good,  the 
Great,  the  Just,  but  struck  a  fatal  blow  at  the  unity  of 
the  Godhead.  Such  a  scheme  of  redemption  requires  at 
least  two  Gods,  or  it  strips  Christ  of  His  Divinity,  in 
which  latter  case  His  death  ceases  to  be  the  infinite 

ner  always  has  access  to  his  Heavenly  Father?  And  yet  we  are 
assured  that  "I  and  the  Father  are  one,"  John  x.  30;  "Believe 
Me,  that  I  am  in  the  Father,  and  the  Father  in  Me,"  John  xiv. 
6-7,  9-1 1 ;  **I  am  the  door  of  the  sheep — by  Me,  if  any  man 
enter,  he  shall  be  saved,  and  shall  go  in  and  out  and  find  his 
pasture,"  John  x.  7-9. 

In  what  Church  is  it  taught  to-day  that  the  Jesus  of  the  New 
Testament  is  identical  with  the  Jehovah  of  the  Old?  Yet,  see 
Isaiah  xxv.  9-40,  3-5-10. — Preface  to  the  Gospel  According 
to  St.  Luke,  translated  from  the  original  Greek,  and  illustrated 
by  extracts  from  the  theological  writings  of  Emanuel  Sweden- 
borg, together  zvith  notes  and  observations  by  the  translator,  an- 
nexed to  each  chapter,  by  the  late  Rev.  J.  Clowes,  M.  A.,  Rector 
of  St.  John's  Church,  Manchester,  and  Fellozv  of  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Cambridge,  who  was  a  member  and  pastor  in  full  standing 
of  the  established  Church  of  England  until  his  deaths 

59 


sacrifice  which  is  claimed  to  have  been  the  stipulated 
price  of  our  redemption. 

Third,  In  clearing  up  my  ideas  on  the  Atonement^ 
Swedenborg  helped  me  to  see  that  Heaven  and  Hell 
are  not  places,  but  states  or  conditions  of  the  soul ;  that 
no  sinner,  whatever  he  believes,  or  thinks  he  believes, 
can  experience  the  joys  of  Heaven,  except  by  ceasing 
to  be  a  sinner;  and  that  this  change  is  wrought,  not 
as  I  had  been  taught,  from  outside  of  him,  or  in  and 
through  another  being  by  transfer  or  imputation,  but 
by  ''a  life  according  to  the  commandments";  by  works 
as  well  as  faith.  He  must  actually  be  inhabited  by  the 
righteousness  which  saves  and  justifies.  I  had  been  ac- 
customed to  think  that,  when  I  was  created,  I  was  de- 
livered over  to  the  world  like  a  plough  from  its  factory, 
or  a  steamer  from  the  shipyard;  that  my  Creator  was 
to  have  no  more  to  do  with  me,  at  least  until  the  last 
assize,  than  the  maker  of  the  plough  and  of  the  steamer 
have  to  do  with  them ;  that  I  had  been  wound  up,  as  it 
were,  to  run  like  a  clock  for  a  few  years,  more  or  less, 
and  that  I  was  to  be  the  real  author  of  everything  I 
did  or  thought  until  I  should  have  "run  down" — or  like 
Job,  '1  should  lie  down  in  the  dark."  It  was  Sweden- 
borg that  first  brought  home  to  me  the  conviction  that 
every  sin  and  every  sinful  propensity  has  its  origin  in 
this  self-love,  in  this  sense  of  self-sufficiency,  in  this 
primeval  ambition  to  be  as  Gods;  that  it  was  only  by 
expelling,  and  only  so  fast  as  we  do  expel  this  self- 
hood from  our  hearts,  that  the  Lord  could  come  in  and 
dwell  with  us.  It  was  not  till  I  began  to  explore  my 
heart  and  study  the  motives  of  my  conduct  by  the  light 
of  this  fearful  revelation,  so  new  to  me,  though  it  lies 

60 


on  the  very  surface  of  all  Christ*s  teaching  and  example, 
that  I  began  to  realize  how  selfish  and  worldly  my 
life  had  been  from  the  beginning;  how  habitually  I  had 
appropriated  to  myself  the  credit  of  anything  I  thought 
I  had  done  well;  how  ingeniously  I  excused  and  justi- 
fied what  I  had  done  wrong;  with  how  little  charity  I 
had  judged  those  whose  conduct  wounded  what  I 
thought  to  be  my  interests,  my  vanity,  or  my  pride; 
how  little  concern  I  had  felt  for  the  happiness  and  wel- 
fare of  others  compared  with  that  I  felt  for  my  own; 
how  impracticable  seemed  the  Divine  injunction  to  do 
unto  others  as  I  would  have  others  do  to  me ;  how  read- 
ily I  thought  evil  of  those  who  differed  with  me  in 
opinion;  how  slow  to  run  to  the  relief  of  a  fellow  sin- 
ner waylaid  and  overcome  by  temptation,  and  left  bleed- 
ing by  the  roadside,  to  suffer,  and  perhaps  to  perish,  for 
lack  of  timely  sympathy  and  succor.  I  now  realized 
for  the  first  time  that  the  whole  of  the  work  of  regen- 
eration consisted  in  expelling  the  self-hood  which,  with 
the  crew  of  devils  in  its  service,  was  always  trying  to 
persuade  me  that  it  was  my  own  breath  I  drew,  my  own 
thought  I  used,  my  own  work  in  which  I  triumphed. 
It  was  this  self-hood  which  urged  me  to  conciliate  the 
self-hood  of  others  and  which  I  yearned  to  have  others 
conciliate  in  me;  it  was  to  this  self-hood  that  I  found 
political  agitators  and  aspirants,  philanthropists  and  re- 
formers, made  their  most  successful  appeals.  As  I 
watched  and  became  more  conversant  with  this  infirm- 
ity, I  found,  to  my  astonishment,  that  to  its  head-quar- 
ters might  be  traced  every  sinful  thought,  lust  and  act 
which  obstructs  the  Lord  in  the  effort  He  is  always 
making  to  re-unite  us  with  Him,  and  to  perfect  His 

6i 


image  in  us ;  that  it  was  the  germ  of  all  dissension,  dis- 
ease, misery  and  crime  in  human  society,  and  that  the 
highest,  not  to  say  the  only  ambition  which  any  mortal 
can  afford  to  indulge,  is  to  pursue  and  extirpate  this 
self-hood — this  proprium,  as  Swedenborg  most  appro- 
priately terms  it — as  persistently  and  unrelentingly  and 
unsparingly  as  the  Israelites  were  instructed  to  pursue 
and  exterminate  the  inhabitants  of  Canaan,  who,  Swe- 
denborg tells  us,  represent  the  several  classes  of  enemies 
that  beset  every  human  soul.* 

*  Swedenborg's  views  of  the  proprium  or  self-hood,  which 
figure  more  or  less  conspicuously  in  all  his  writings,  may  be 
gathered  from  a  few  extracts  upon  that  subject  taken  from  his 
Arcana  Ccelestia.  "Man's  proprium  is  in  itself  dead,  and  no  one 
has  life  from  himself,  as  is  shown  so  clearly  in  the  world  of 
spirits,  that  evil  spirits  who  love  nothing  but  the  proprium,  and 
obstinately  insist  that  they  live  from  themselves,  are  convinced 
by  sensible  experience,  and  forced  to  confess  that  they  do  not 
live  from  themselves.  It  has  been  especially  permitted  me  now 
for  several  years  to  become  acquainted  with  the  human  pro- 
prium and  it  has  been  granted  to  me  to  perceive  clearly  that  I 
could  think  nothing  from  myself,  but  that  every  idea  or  thought 
entered  by  influx,  and  sometimes,  how  and  where  this  influx  en- 
tered. The  man,  therefore,  who  supposes  that  he  lives  from 
himself,  is  in  the  false,  and  in  consequence  appropriates  to  him- 
self everything  evil  and  false,  which  he  would  never  do,  were  he 
to  believe  according  to  the  truth  of  the  case."    Arcana  Coslestia, 

A,  C,  154.  "Nothing  evil  and  false  can  possibly  exist  which 
is  not  the  proprium,  for  the  proprium  of  man  is  evil  itself,  and 
hence  man  is  nothing  but  evil  and  falsity.  This  was  demon- 
strated to  me  by  the  fact  that  when  the  proprium  of  man  is  pre- 
sented to  view  in  the  world  of  spirits,  it  appears  so  deformed 
that  it  is  impossible  to  detect  anything  more  ugly,  although 
with  a  difference,  according  to  the  nature  of  the  proprium,  so 
that  he  to  whom  the  things  of  his  proprium  are  visibly  ex- 
hibited is  struck  with  horror,  and  wishes  to  flee  from  himself  as 
from  a  devil." 

"It  requires  but  little  attention  in  any  one  to  discover  that 
woman  was  not  made  out  of  the  rib  of  man  (Gen.  ii.  22.)  and 
that  deeper  arcana  are  here  implied  than  any  person  has  hereto- 
fore been  aware  of.    It  must  be  plain,  also,  that  by  the  woman 

62 


Fourth.  It  was  Swedenborg  who  first  made  me  com- 
prehend and  realize  that  all  causes  are  spiritual;  and 
all  phenomena  were  only  effects;  that  all  things  which 
exist  in  the  spiritual  world  are  the  direct  or  indirect 
causes  of  all  those  effects,  that  the  internal  or  spiritual 
man  and  the  external  of  natural  man  are  related  to  each 
other  as  cause  and  effect,  the  causes  of  all  things  oper- 
ating through  the  internal  man  and  all  effects  through 
the  external  man,  and  that  whatever  takes  place  from 
any  cause,  takes  place  from  and  according  to  some  law 
of  the  Divine  Providence. 

Fifth,  From  Swedenborg  I  first  obtained  an  idea  of 
Heaven  and  Hell,  that  seemed  not  irreconcilable  with 
my  conception  of  a  God  of  love ;  the  conviction  that  our 
material  bodies  are  but  garments  in  which  we  are 
clothed  for  a  temporary  purpose,  and  bearing  no  more 
permanent  relation  to  us  than  the  husk  bears  to  the 
corn,  or  the  shell  to  the  walnut,  or  than  the  type  to  the 
thoughts  I  am  here  trying  to  express  with  them;  that 
death,  so  far  from  being  an  interruption  to  man's  life, 
is  rather  a  ministry  unto  life,  and  as  necessary  a  step 
in  it  as  cutting  our  teeth  or  any  other  process  of  de- 
velopment ;  that  through  its  gates  we  are  admitted  into 
a  state  of  existence  in  which  our  faculties  will  be  eman- 
cipated from  the  restrictions  of  sense,  and  their  embry- 
onic capacities  indefinitely  increased  in  proportions  but 
faintly  represented  by  the  growth  of  the  giant  oak  from 
the  embryonic  acorn ;  that  the  spiritual  life  is  but  a  con- 


is  signified  the  proprium,  from  this  circumstance,  that  it  was  the 
woman  who  deceived;  for  nothing  ever  deceives  man  but  the 
proprium,  or  what  is  the  same,  the  love  of  self  and  of  the 
world." 


63 


tinuation  of  our  life  on  earth,  and  that  heaven  consists 
of  a  practically  unlimited  gratification  of  those  prevail- 
ing loves  in  harmony  with  Divine  laws,  which  the  dying 
carry  with  them;  that  hell  consists  of  an  equally  free 
indulgence  of  the  prevailing  lusts  and  passions  not  in 
harmony  with  the  Divine  order,  which  the  dying  carry 
with  them;  that,  whether  in  heaven  or  in  hell,  we  have 
what  in  life  we  have  prepared  ourselves  most  to  enjoy, 
and  that  an  abode  in  heaven  would  be  as  full  of  torture 
to  one  without  heavenly  affections,  as  hell  would  be  to 
one  with  such  affections ;  and,  finally,  that  God's  mercy 
or  love,  which  "is  over  all  His  works,''  is  manifested 
just  as  unceasingly,  and  just  as  bountifully,  towards 
those  whose  loves  have  attracted  them  to  the  one  place, 
as  to  those  whose  loves  have  attracted  them  to  the  oth- 
er; that  He  is  always  in  the  effort  to  give  to  every 
one,  whether  regenerate  or  unregenerate,  all  the  hap- 
piness such  person  is  capable  of  receiving.  This  I  found, 
when  I  had  divested  myself  of  some  of  the  prejudices 
in  which  I  had  been  educated,  was  the  teaching  of  the 
Bible,  and  that  the  sensuous  heaven  and  hell  of  the  pop- 
ular theology  was  simply  a  vulgar  expression  of  our 
most  corrupt  and  selfish  instincts. 

Sixth,  That  God's  infinite  love  is  bestowed  as  con- 
stantly upon  the  greatest  sinner  as  upon  the  greatest 
saint,  is  manifested  as  fully  in  what  we  regard  as  tribu- 
lations or  calamities  as  in  what,  in  the  worldly  sense,  we 
regard  as  blessings,  as  prosperity,  as  triumphs.  That  so 
far  from  having  a  penal  purpose,  our  tribulations  are 
merciful  warnings  that  we  are  violating  some  of  the 
laws  of  our  being,  the  observance  of  which  is  indis- 
pensable to  our  supreme  happiness  and  are  permitted 

64 


only  to  incite  us  to  trace  our  errors  to  their  hiding 
places  and  to  correct  them. 

Seventh,  In  confessing  what  I  am  in  the  habit  of  re- 
garding as  the  most  conspicuous  of  my  obHgations, 
under  Providence,  to  Swedenborg,  I  reserve  for  the 
last,  the  one  without  which  I  possibly  should  never  have 
had  the  grace  to  understand  or  appropriate  those  al- 
ready enumerated,  and  one  which  I  regard  as  by  far 
the  most  important  contribution  made  to  the  science  of 
theology  since  the  death  of  the  Apostles.  I  refer  to  his 
disclosure  of  the  correspondential  language  in  which 
God  has  chosen  to  reveal  Himself  to  man  in  His  Word. 

To  aid  in  the  comprehension  of  this  doctrine  of  cor- 
respondence, to  which  I  attach  such  value,  I  must 
pause  for  a  little  to  consider  what  sort  of  a  book  we 
should  expect  the  Bible  to  be;  how  the  Word  of  God 
must  have  been  written  to  serve  as  a  lamp  to  the  feet 
and  a  light  to  the  path  of  the  children  of  men;  in  what 
sort  of  language  infinite  truth  could  be  made  intelli- 
gible to  finite  beings;  and,  finally,  in  what  respect  such 
a  Book  should  necessarily  differ  from  secular  literature. 

Obviously,  God's  Word  could  not  be  addressed  ex- 
clusively to  any  particular  stage  of  intellectual  matur- 
ity, for  "His  tender  mercies  are  over  all  His  works." 
It  necessarily  had  to  be  written  for  the  instruction  of 
the  young,  as  well  as  of  the  aged ;  for  the  weak,  as  well 
as  for  the  strong;  for  the  ignorant,  as  well  as  for  the 
learned ;  for  the  idolater,  as  well  as  for  the  monotheist. 
It  had,  also,  to  be  written  not  for  any  particular  nation, 
nor  for  any  particular  generation ;  no  more  for  the  saint 
than  the  savage,  for  the  Jew  than  for  the  Gentile. 

Neither  can  we  conceive  of  such  a  Book  being  writ- 

65 


ten  for  any  particular  era  or  stage  of  civilization.  On 
the  contrary,  such  a  message  had  to  be  suited  to  the 
intelligence  and  spiritual  perceptions  of  every  genera- 
tion, of  every  nation,  of  every  era,  in  every  age  and 
stage  of  civilization,  for  God  is  no  respecter  of  persons. 
Nor  is  that  all.  It  had  to  be  adapted  to  all  the  changes 
and  spiritual  fluctuations  to  which  every  human  soul 
ever  has  been  or  ever  can  be  subject ;  its  lessons  adapted 
to  every  possible  stage  in  the  process  of  every  human 
being's  spiritual  regeneration  or  degeneration.  It  is 
not  possible  to  conceive  of  God  the  Infinite  and  Eternal 
giving  His  preference  to  any  nation  or  tribe,  or  provid- 
ing less  carefully  for  one  period  of  our  lives  than  for 
another,  for  the  old  than  for  the  young,  for  the  mature 
than  the  immature — for  the  rich  than  for  the  poor,  for 
the  learned  than  for  the  ignorant,  for  the  saint  than  for 
the  savage.  A  book  of  instructions  essential  to  salva- 
tion, addressed  to  any  peculiar  people  or  tribe,  or  to 
the  people  of  any  particular  epoch,  age,  vi^orldly  or 
spiritual  condition,  would  necessarily  absolve  all  outside 
of  those  categories  respectively,  from  any  culpability  or 
responsibility  for  disregarding  those  instructions,  and 
would  imply  limitations  of  God's  interest  in  the 
salvation  of  His  creatures,  which  would  be  wholly 
inconsistent  with  the  essential  attributes  of  the  Divine 
Nature. 

Nor  is  this  all.  The  inferiority  of  all  creatures  to  the 
Creator  is  infinite.  The  angels  are  as  much  His  crea- 
tures as  any  of  their  ancestors  in  the  heavens  or  their 
descendants  on  earth,  and  therefore  must  be  presumed 
to  have  as  much  to  learn  from  the  teachings  of  Infinite 
Wisdom  in  the  spiritual    world,    as    when  they  dwelt 

66 


among  men  in  the  flesh ;  indeed,  more,  for  they  may  be 
assumed  to  be  more  enlightened,  and  capable  of  receiv- 
ing more.  The  Book,  therefore,  which  professes  to  be 
the  Word  of  God,  and  a  guide  in  the  ways  of  salva- 
tion, should  express  truths  unconditionally  adapted  to 
the  spiritual  needs  of  all  His  creatures,  at  all  times, 
under  all  circumstances,  from  the  beginning  and  to  all 
eternity.  Any  other  conception  of  God's  Word  to  His 
creatures  could  not  be  consistent  with  the  essential  at- 
tributes of  Divinity. 

It  is  plain  that  each  of  these  conditions  differentiates 
such  a  book  profoundly  from  any  imaginable  human 
composition.  Swedenborg  assures  us,  and  I  think  dem- 
onstrates, that  in  the  Bible — the  Books* — we  have 
God's  Word  precisely  so  conditioned  and  differentiated 
from  all  other  books.  What,  then,  are  the  structural 
differences  between  the  Word  and  all  other  human 
compositions,  which  gives  such  limitless  scope  to  its 
teachings  ? 

The  natural  world  in  which  we  live,  with  all  its 
phenomena,  is  a  world  of  effects.  The  causes  of  such 
effects,  as  I  have  already  stated,  lie  far  back  in  the  will, 
or  more  properly  speaking,  in  the  spiritual  world.  All 
the  phenomena  of  life,  by  which  I  mean  everything  of 
which  we  take  cognizance  by  or  through  the  senses,  are 
but  the  sensual  manifestations  or  effects  of  spiritual 
causes,  the  action  of  some  will,  without  which  action 

*  The  Greek  word  Biblia,  signifying  the  Books,  is  plural,  and 
passed  into  the  Latin  as  Biblia,  which  at  first  was  a  neuter  plural. 
It  gradually  passed  over  into  a  feminine  singular  because  of  the 
habit  of  regarding  the  Scriptures  as  one  work.  All  the  modem 
translations  have  followed  the  usage  of  the  old  Church.  Did 
they  and  the  late  Revisers  do  so,  erring? 

67 


they  could  not  have  been  manifested.  Phenomena  are 
representations  of  the  will  or  purpose  which  begat 
them.  There  must,  therefore,  be  not  only  a  rela- 
tion but  a  correspondence  between  every  phenomenon, 
which  is  material,  and  its  parent  will.  This  correspon- 
dence has  been  aptly  compared  to  the  relation  of  speech 
to  thought ;  of  the  printed  page  to  the  ideas  it  expresses. 
Every  material  object  and  phenomenon  expresses  so 
precisely  the  motive  or  will  of  which  it  was  begotten, 
that  a  person  as  competent  to  read  the  language  of 
all  phenomena  as  he  is  to  read  the  books  written  in  his 
native  tongue,  would  in  one,  as  in  the  other,  think 
only  of  the  idea,  motive,  or  will  it  expressed,  rarely 
ever  of  the  phenomenon  or  type  by  which  the  par- 
ent idea  was  made  intelligible  to  him  through  the 
senses.  When  we  see  a  smile  on  the  face  of  a  friend, 
or  a  tear  in  his  eye,  our  mind  does  not  dwell  upon 
the  muscular  change  in  the  one  case,  nor  upon 
the  fountain  in  the  other,  but  upon  the  pleasant  af- 
fection or  tender  sympathy  of  which  they  are  the  na- 
tural interpreters.  The  smile  or  the  tear  correspond 
with  the  emotion  which  they  manifest,  though  neither 
has  anything  to  do  with  producing  the  emotion,  or  has 
any  consciousness  of  it.  The  human  face  reveals  to  the 
most  careless  observer  well-defined  qualities  of  char- 
acter, and  it  is  those  qualities  only,  whether  correctly 
or  incorrectly  divined,  that  we  commonly  carry  in  our 
memories.  One  person  we  say  is  cunning;  another, 
open  and  frank;  a  third,  vain;  a  fourth,  cruel,  and  so 
on.  The  features  represent  or  correspond  with  the 
several  qualities  of  cunning,  frankness,  vanity,  and 
cruelty,  which  have  been  indulged  in  to  a  greater  or 

68 


less  excess.    This  idea  is  happily  expressed  in  a  familiar 
couplet  of  the  "Faery  Queen'' — 

"For  of  the  Soul  the  bodie  form  doth  take, 
For  Soul  is  forme  and  doth  the  bodie  make." 

There  is  nothing,  there  can  be  nothing,  therefore,  in 
the  natural  world  which  does  not  represent  something 
in  the  spiritual  world,  or  which  has  not  there  something 
with  which  it  corresponds.  The  natural  world,  its  activ- 
ities and  phenomena,  are  the  language  of  God :  the  tones 
or  utterances  of  infinitude  adapted  to  the  comprehension 
of  mortal  man,  and  when  we  read  in  the  Word,  of  the 
deluge,  of  the  ark,  of  mountains  and  rivers,  of  lambs, 
wolves,  wars,  honey,  frankincense,  myrrh,  or  of  any 
other  natural  objects  or  phenomena,  we  are  reading 
vital  truths,  disguised  in  a  language  suited  to  every 
possible  stage  of  spiritual  enlightenment.  This  visible 
world  is  in  fact,  the  thought  of  God  expressed  in  a  lan- 
guage adapted  to  the  intelligence  and  edification  of  all 
its  inhabitants,  in  every  possible  stage  of  spiritual  de- 
velopment. 

"All  nature,  and  each  individual  thing  in  nature," 
says  Swedenborg,  "has  its  spiritual  correspondence; 
and,  in  like  manner,  each  and  all  things  in  the  human 
body.  But  hitherto  it  has  been  unknown  what  cor- 
respondence is.  Yet  it  was  very  well  known  in  the 
most  ancient  times;  for  to  those  who  then  lived  the 
knowledge  of  correspondence  was  the  knowledge  of 
knowledges,  and  was  so  universal  that  all  their  books 
and  manuscripts  were  written  by  correspondence.  The 
Book  of  Job,  which  is  a  book  of  the  Ancient  Church, 
is  full  of  correspondences.  The  hieroglyphics  of  the 
Egyptians,  and  the  fabulous  stories  of  highest  anti- 

69 


quity,  were  nothing  else.  Also,  the  tabernacle  with  all 
things  therein  as  well  as  their  feasts, — such  as  the 
feast  of  unleavened  bread,  the  feast  of  tabernacles, 
the  feast  of  first-fruits; — and  the  priesthood  of 
Aaron  and  the  Levites,  and  their  garments  of  holi- 
ness; and  besides  these,  all  their  statutes  and  judg- 
ments, which  related  to  their  worship  and  life,  were 
correspondences.  Now,  since  Divine  things  present 
themselves  in  the  world  by  correspondences,  therefore 
the  Word  was  written  by  pure  correspondences.  For 
the  same  reason  the  Lord,  as  He  spake  from  the  Di- 
vine spake  by  correspondences ;  for  whatever  is  from 
the  Divine  descends  into  such  things  in  nature  as  cor- 
respond to  the  Divine,  and  which  then  conceal  things 
Divine,  which  are  called  celestial  and  spiritual,  in 
their  bosom." 

"Without  the  spiritual  sense,"  says  he  in  another 
place,  "no  one  could  know  why  the  prophet  Jeremiah 
was  commanded  to  buy  himself  a  girdle  and  put  it  on 
his  loins,  and  not  to  draw  it  through  the  waters,  but 
to  hide  it  in  the  hole  of  a  rock  by  the  Euphrates  ( Jer. 
xiii.  1-7),  or  why  the  prophet  Isaiah  was  commanded 
to  loose  the  sackcloth  from  off  his  loins  and  put  off 
the  shoe  from  off  his  foot,  and  to  go  naked  and  bare- 
foot three  years  (Isaiah  xx.  2,  3) ;  or  why  the 
prophet  Ezekiel  was  commanded  to  pass  a  razor  upon 
his  head  and  upon  his  beard,  and  afterwards  to  divide 
them  [the  hairs]  and  burn  a  third  part  in  the  midst 
of  the  city,  smite  a  third  part  with  the  sword,  scatter 
a  third  part  in  the  wind,  and  bind  a  little  of  them  in 
his  skirts,  and  at  last  to  cast  them  into  the  midst  of 
the  fire  (Ezek.  vi.  4) ;  or  why  the  same  prophet  was 
commanded  to  lie  upon  his  left  side  three  hundred  and 
ninety  days,  and  upon  his  right  side  forty  days ;  and  to 
make  him  a  cake  of  wheat  and  barley  and  millet  and 
fitches,  with  cow's  dung,  and  eat  it,  and  in  the  mean 
time  to  raise  a  rampart  and  a  mound  against  Jerusa- 

70 


lem  and  besiege  it  (Ezek.  iv.  1-5)  ;  or  why  the  prophet 
Hosea  was  twice  commanded  to  take  to  himself  a  har- 
lot to  wife  (Hosea  i.  2-9,  iii.  2,  3) ;  and  many  such 
things.  Moreover,  who,  without  the  spiritual  sense, 
would  know  what  is  signified  by  all  things  belonging 
to  the  tabernacle, — by  the  ark,  the  mercy-seat,  the 
cherubim,  the  candle-stick,  the  altar  of  incense,  the 
bread  of  faces  on  the  table,  and  its  veils  and  curtains  ? 
Or  who,  without  the  spiritual  sense,  would  know  what 
is  signified  by  Aaron's  garments  of  holiness, — by  his 
coat,  his  cloak,  his  ephod,  the  Urim  and  Thummim, 
the  mitre  and  other  things  ?  Who,  without  the  spirit- 
ual sense,  would  know  what  is  signified  by  all  the 
things  which  were  enjoined  concerning  burnt-offer- 
ings, sacrifices,  meat-offerings  and  drink-offerings? 
Concerning  Sabbaths  also,  and  feasts?  The  truth  is 
that  not  the  least  thing  of  these  was  enjoined  which 
did  not  signify  something  relating  to  the  Lord,  to 
heaven  and  to  the  church.  From  these  few  examples 
it  may  be  clearly  seen  that  there  is  a  spiritual  sense  in 
each  and  all  the  particulars  of  the  Word." 

The  Book  of  Genesis,  from  its  beginning  to  the  call 
of  Abram  (chapters  i.-xi.),  adds  Swedenborg,  was 
not  written  by  Moses,  but  is  a  fragment  of  an  older 
Scripture;  neither  are  those  early  chapters  matter-of- 
fact  history,  but  compositions,  in  the  form  of  history, 
symbolical  of  things  celestial  and  spiritual. 

"They  who  do  not  think  beyond  the  sense  of  the 
letter,  cannot  believe  otherwise  than  that  the  Creation 
described  in  the  first  and  second  chapters  of  Genesis 
means  the  creation  of  the  universe;  and  that  within 
six  days,  heaven  and  earth  and  sea,  and  things  there- 
in, and  men  in  the  likeness  of  God,  were  created; 
but  who,  if  he  ponder  deeply,  cannot  see,  that  the  crea- 

71 


tion  of  the  universe  is  not  there  meant?  Common- 
sense  might  teach  that  the  operations  there  described 
were  impossible;  as,  that  there  were  days,  and  Hght 
and  darkness,  and  green  herbs  and  fruitful  trees,  be- 
fore the  appearance  of  the  sun  and  moon.  Similar 
difficulties  follow,  which  are  scarcely  credited  by  any 
one  who  thinks  interiorly:  as,  that  the  woman  was 
built  from  the  rib  of  the  man ;  that  two  trees  were  set 
in  Paradise,  and  the  fruit  of  one  forbidden  to  be 
eaten;  that  the  serpent  discoursed  with  the  wife  of 
the  man,  who  was  the  wisest  of  mortals,  and  deceived 
them  both ;  and  the  universal  human  race  was  on  that 
account  condemned  to  hell. 

"Nevertheless  it  is  to  be  noted,  that  all  things  in 
that  story,  even  to  the  smallest  iota,  are  divine,  and 
contain  in  them  arcana,  which  before  the  angels  in 
the  heavens  are  manifest  as  in  a  clear  day." 

Swedenborg  avers  that  in  their  highest  state  of  ex- 
cellence, in  the  Church  before  the  flood,  men  had  an 
intuitive  perception  of  the  correspondences  that  uni- 
versally exist  in  nature,  so  that  their  language  was  the 
language  of  nature,  that  is,  of  correspondences;  and 
that  consequently  the  rites  of  the  Church  became  cor- 
respondential,  and  representative  of  heavenly  things; 
but  that  in  time  men  became  sensual  and  lost  their  per- 
ception of  correspondences,  and  the  rites  of  the  Church 
lost,  in  their  minds,  their  representative  character.  In 
observing  the  rites  irrespective  of  the  spiritual  things 
they  represented,  they  at  length  became  idolatrous. 

That  there  was  a  more  ancient  revelation  than  ours, 
as  Swedenborg  affirms,  is  proved  by  abundant  allu- 
sions to  them  in  our  Word:  for  example  The  Book  of 
the  Wars  of  Jehovah  is  cited  in  Numbers  xxi.  14  and 
Joshua  X.  13;  the  Book  of  lasher  is  cited  in  II  Samuel 

72 


i.  i8;  The  Proverbial  Enunciations  are  cited  in  Num- 
bers xxi.  27y  30.  Besides  there  were  the  Sayings  of 
the  Seers,  II  Chronicles  xxxiii.  19,  The  Prophecy  of 
Aijah,  cited  in  II  Chronicles  ix.  29,  and  The  Book  of 
Nathan,  cited  I  Chronicles  xxix.  29. 

All  these  records  were  written  in  the  language  of 
correspondence  or  symbolically,  and  if  they  had  sur- 
vived would  not  be  intelligible  except  to  those  to  whom 
the  language  of  correspondence  had  been  disclosed,  and 
so  far  only  as  it  had  been  disclosed.  The  scraps  of 
them  which  we  find  in  the  Bible  are  remnants  only  of 
sacred  books  far  older  than  any  script  now  extant,  and 
which  contained  the  wisdom  suited  to  a  people  far 
more  simple,  unselfish  and  intuitively  wise  than  any 
of  whom  history  has  preserved  any  record.  To  recover 
this  lost  knowledge  of  correspondences,  Swedenborg 
claims  that  a  new  revelation  from  the  Lord  was  neces- 
sary; that,  for  reasons  which  he  assigns,  he  was 
selected  as  the  medium  through  which  that  revelation 
was  to  be  made, — at  the  time,  and  at  the  earliest  time, 
when  the  world  was  prepared  to  receive  and  profit  by 
it;  just  as  the  apostles,  Moses  and  the  prophets,  were 
severally  and  at  different  periods  of  human  history,  se- 
lected for  their  respective  offices.  Swedenborg's  own 
testimony  upon  this  subject,  already  cited,  is  very  re- 
markable. Nor  did  he  shrink  from  reasserting  his  Di- 
vine commission  on  all  suitable  occasions. 

He  says  in  the  True  Christian  Religion,  No.  1779: 

I  testify  in  truth  that  the  Lord  manifested  Him- 
self to  me  His  servant,  and  sent  me  to  this  office;  and 
that  afterwards  He  opened  the  sight  of  my  spirit  and 
so  intromitted  me  into  the  spiritual  world,  and  has 

7Z 


granted  me  to  see  the  heavens  and  the  hells,  and  also 
to  converse  with  angels  and  spirits,  and  this  now  con- 
tinually for  many  years;  likewise  that  from  the  first 
day  of  that  calling  I  have  not  received  anything 
whatever  relating  to  the  doctrines  of  that  Church 
from  any  angel,  but  from  the  Lord  alone  while  I  was 
reading  the  Word. 

Again,  in  the  Apocalypse  Explained,  No.  1183,  ^^ 
says: 

It  has  been  given  me  to  perceive  distinctly  what 
comes  from  the  Lord  and  what  from  angels ;  what  has 
come  from  the  Lord  has  been  written,  and  what  from 
the  angels  has  not  been  written. 

In  his  Invitation  to  the  New  Church  he  says  also : 

The  things  related  by  me  are  not  miracles,  but  are 
proofs  that  for  certain  ends  I  have  been  introduced  by 
the  Lord  into  the  spiritual  world. 

The  chief  results  of  these  communications  or  revela- 
tions were  recorded  in  three  distinct  works. 

The  first,  entitled  Arcana  Coelestia,"^  appeared  in 
eight  quarto  volumes,  between  the  years  1749  and  1756, 
at  the  rate  of  about  one  volume  a  year,  and  was  conse- 
crated to  an  exposition  of  the  internal  or  spiritual  sense 
of  the  books  of  Genesis  and  Exodus.  Each  sentence  is 
taken  up  in  its  order,  and  its  spiritual  import  laid  open ; 
for  Swedenborg  maintained  that  "there  is  not  an  iota 
or  apex  or  little  twirl  of  the  Hebrew  letters  which  does 
not  involve  something  Divine."  "This,"  he  says,  "has 
been  shown  to  me  from  heaven;  but  I  know  it  trans- 
cends belief."t 

"^Arcana  Coelestia  qucs  in  Scriptura  Sacra,  seu  in  Verho  Do- 
mini  sunt,  detecta;  una  cum  mirabilius,  quce  visa  sunt  in  Mundi 
Spirituum  et  ccelo  Angelorum. 

'\  Arc.  Coelestia,  No.  4049. 

74 


Second.  The  Apocalypse  Revealed,  wherein  are  un- 
covered the  mysteries  there  foretold  which  have  hither- 
to remained  concealed.* 

Third,  The  Apocalypse  Explained,  wherein  are  dis- 
closed the  mysteries  there  foretold,  which  have  hitherto 
remained  concealed,  t  The  former  is  more  summary, 
and  the  latter  a  more  extended  work,  involving  incident- 
ally an  exposition  of  a  very  considerable  part  of  the  rest 
of  the  Word. 

"This  year,''  says  Swedenborg  in  a  letter  to  his 
friend  Oetinger,  writing  from  Stockholm,  Sept.  23, 
1766,  ''there  has  been  published  the  Apocalypsis 
Revelata,  which  was  promised  in  the  treatise  on  The 
Last  Judgment,  and  from  which  it  may  be  clearly 
seen  that  I  converse  with  angels ;  for  not  the  smallest 
verse  in  the  Apocalypse  can  be  understood  without 
revelation.  Who  can  help  seeing  that  by  the  New 
Jerusalem  a  New  Church  is  meant,  and  that  its  doc- 
trines can  only  be  revealed  by  the  Lord, — because  they 
are  described  there  by  merely  typical  things,  i.  e.y  by 
correspondences;  and  likewise  that  these  can  be  pub- 
lished to  the  world  only  by  means  of  some  one  to 
whom  the  revelation  has  been  granted  ?  I  can  solemn- 
ly bear  witness  that  the  Lord  Himself  appeared  to 
me,  and  that  He  sent  me  to  do  that  which  I  am  now 
doing;  and  that  for  this  purpose  He  has  opened  the 
interiors  of  my  mind,  which  are  those  of  my  spirit, 
so  that  I  can  see  the  things  which  are  in  the  spiritual 
world,    and    hear    those    who    are    there;    which 

*  Apocalypsis  Revelata  in  qua  deteguntur  arcana  quce  tbi 
procdicta  sunt,  et  hactenus  recondita  latuerunt.  Amsterdam, 
1766,  4to,  pp.  629. 

f  Apocalypsis  Explicata  secundum  sensum  spiritiialem  ubi 
revelantur  arcana  quce  ibi  prcedicta  et  hactenus  recondita  fiierent 
ex  operibus  posthumis  Emanuelis  Swedenborgii.  Londoni,  in  4 
vols.,  4to,  vol.  I,  1785;  vol.  2,  1786;  vol.  3,  1788;  vol.  4,  1789. 

75 


[privilege]  I  have  had  now  for  twenty-two  years. 
The  mere  bearing  witness,  however,  does  not  suffice 
at  the  present  day  to  convince  men  of  this;  but  any 
one  of  a  sound  understanding  may  be  confirmed  by 
the  testimony  of  my  writings,  and  especially  by  the 
Apocalypsis  Revelata.  Who  has  heretofore  known 
anything  about  the  spiritual  sense  of  the  Word;  and 
about  the  spiritual  world,  or  heaven  and  hell ;  or  about 
man's  life  after  death  ?  Should  these,  and  many  other 
things,  be  perpetually  hidden  from  Christians  ?  They 
have  now  for  the  first  time  been  disclosed  for  the  sake 
of  the  New  Church,  which  is  the  New  Jerusalem,  that 
they  [its  members]  may  know  them;  others  indeed 
shall  also  know  them,  who  yet  do  not  know  them  on 
account  of  their  unbelief/' 

Swedenborg  does  not  profess  to  give  all  the  internal 
meaning  of  which  the  Word  is  the  repository.  So  far 
from  It,  he  represents  the  Word  to  be  infinite;  to  con- 
tain even  profounder  depths  of  wisdom  than  can  be  ex- 
pressed in  the  language  of  men ;  adapted,  by  successive 
unfoldings,  to  the  angels  of  all  the  heavens, — to  the 
highest  state  of  intelligence  that  finite  minds  can  ever, 
to  all  eternity,  attain;  and  extending  upwards  even  to 
God  Himself,  as  the  rays  of  light  extend  to  the  sun.  In 
other  words,  that  it  is  in  the  true  sense  of  the  term 
Divine,  and  therefore  infinite.  Hence  the  necessity  that 
the  natural  language  of  the  Bible  should  be  that  of 
correspondences,  capable  of  involving  these  hidden 
things,  and  so  of  being  adapted  to  every  spiritual  state 
of  men  on  earth  and  in  the  heavens.  Swedenborg  would 
therefore  claim  that  the  highest  evidence  of  the  divine 
authority  of  the  Bible  is  to  be  found  in  the  marvellous 
light  of  the  manifold  but  harmonious  meanings  inhabit- 

76 


ing  its  letter,  which  the  devout  and  reverent-minded 
may  find  revealed  through  the  knowledge  of  its  cor- 
respondences now  again  made  known.  He  teaches,  too, 
that  nature  is  a  similar  treasury  of  Divine  wisdom, 
and  capable  of  similar  unfoldings, — a  vast,  continuous 
series  of  cause  and  effect  within  cause  and  effect,  ex- 
tending up  to  God  Himself.  So  that  His  revealed  or 
written  Word  and  His  Word  in  Nature  alike  descend 
from  Him,  and  lead  up  to  Him,  who  is  the  inmost  and 
animating  soul  of  both;  not  a  mere  undefined  pervad- 
ing influence,  but  a  Divine  Personal  God, — an  infinitely 
glorious  Divine  Man,  the  great  Archetype,  of  which 
man  was  created  the  finite  image. 

"Without  such  a  living  principle,"  he  says,  "the 
Word  as  to  the  letter  is  dead.  For  it  is  with  the  Word 
as  it  is  with  man,  who,  as  all  Christians  are  taught  to 
believe,  consists  of  two  parts,  an  external  and  an  in- 
ternal. The  external  man  separate  from  the  internal 
is  the  body,  which  in  such  a  state  of  separation  is 
dead ;  but  the  internal  is  that  which  lives  and  causes 
the  external  to  live.  The  internal  man  is  the  soul; 
and  thus  the  Word,  as  to  the  letter  alone,  is  like  a  body 
without  a  soul." 

Have  we  not  here  an  explanation  and  a  so- 
lution of  the  difficulties  which  furnish  the  pre- 
texts of  Higher  Criticism  so  called,  to  distract  the 
various  religious  societies  of  Christendom  and  under- 
mine the  faith  of  multitudes  in  the  Bible,  and  in  the 
God  of  Abraham  and  of  Isaac  and  of  Jacob?  What 
else  is  it  but  the  "dreary  literalism"  in  which,  accord- 
ing to  a  former  bishop  of  New  York,  the  Bible  has 
been  for  many  years  walled  up,  or  according  to  Swe- 

77 


denborg,  the  Bible  as  a  body  without  a  soul,  which  is 
the  same  thing  ?  * 


VII 

The:re:  probably  has  never  been  a  line  written  that  has 
unsettled  the  faith  of  so  many  in  the  Divine  origin  and 
authority  of  the  Bible,  as  the  opening  sentence  of  that 
sacred  volume: 

In  the  beginning  God  created  the  heavens  and  the 

earth. 

Assuming,  as  the  Christian  world  with  practical  un- 
animity has  done,  that  the  Mosaic  chronology  dates  from 
this  ^'beginning"  it  holds  to  this  day  that  our  world  is 
about  6,000  years  old,  while  science  has  demonstrated 
that  600,000  years  is  much  nearer  to  the  truth.  Falsus 
in  uno  falsus  in  omnibus  is  a  doctrine  as  conclusive  in 
ecclesiastical  as  in  civil  law,  and  the  Agnostic  exclaims, 

*  For  the  information  of  those  to  whom  Swedenborg  is  com- 
paratively a  stranger,  and  this  unhappily  includes  most  of  those 
who  might  derive  the  greatest  advantage  from  an  acquaintance 
with  his  writings — the  "Orthodox  Clergy" — they  will  find,  in  the 
Appendix,  a  list  of  the  Theological  writings  of  Swedenborg  and 
the  dates  of  their  composition  embracing  over  forty  distinct 
works  in  nearly  half  as  many  volumes.  Of  these  several  works, 
a  concordance  has  been  published  in  which  a  reference  to  every 
passage  in  them  with  a  brief  extract  is  given,  arranged  in  alpha- 
betical order,  and  ranging  in  length  from  a  single  line  to  many 
pages.  This  gigantic  work,  as  a  monument  of  patient  intel- 
lectual industry,  does  not  suffer  by  a  comparison  with  the  most 
laborious  achievements  of  the  Benedictine  monks.  It  has  occu- 
pied the  compiler,  editor  and  translator,  the  Rev.  John  Faulkner 
Potts,  over  twenty  years,  and  contains  more  words  than  the 
Century  Dictionary.  I  do  not  know  where  to  look  in  all  the 
secular  literature  of  the  world  for  another  publication  so 
abounding  in  luminous  suggestions  touching  the  loftiest  themes 
of  human  concern. 

78 


'Tiow  absurd  to  ascribe  divine  authority  to  a  book  that 
begins  with  what  appears  to  be  either  a  gross  blunder  or 
a  falsehood!'' 

Swedenborg  tells  us  that  this  first  chapter  of  Genesis, 
which  is  commonly  supposed  to  treat  only  of  the  creation 
of  the  world,  and  of  the  Garden  of  Eden  called  Para- 
dise, and  of  Adam  as  the  first  created  man,  really  treats 
of  the  second  birth  or  new  creation  of  man,  that  is,  his 
regeneration,  and  that  the  six  days  of  creation  represent 
so  many  successive  stages  of  his  regeneration.  The  first 
stage  is  that  which  is  referred  to  as  the  "beginning,'' 
and  includes  both  the  state  of  infancy  and  the  state  im- 
mediately preceding  regeneration.  This  is  called 
vacuity,  emptiness  and  darkness,  and  the  first  move- 
ment is  the  Spirit  of  God  moving  upon  the  face  of  the 
waters.  "The  beginning,"  he  says,  "implies  the  first 
time  when  man  is  regenerating,  for  then  he  is  born  anew 
and  receives  life,  hence  regeneration,  which  signifies  a 
new  creation." 

"The  people  which  shall  be  created  shall  praise  the 
Lord."    Psalm  cii.  i8. 

"Thou  sendest  forth  thy  Spirit,  they  are  created" 
Psalm  civ.  30. 

Thus  "the  beginning,"  referred  to  in  the  first  verse  of 
Genesis,  does  not  refer  to  any  particular  epoch  in  time, 
but  is  applicable  to  every  regenerating  soul  in  all  time. 
"Good,"  says  Swedenborg,  "has  life  in  itself,  because  it 
is  from  the  Lord,  who  is  life  itself."  In  the  life  which  is 
from  the  Lord  there  is  wisdom  and  intelligence,  for  to 
receive  good  from  the  Lord,  and  thence  to  will  good,  is 
wisdom,  and  to  receive  truth  from  the  Lord,  and  thence 
to  believe  truth    is  intelligence,  and  they  who  have  this 

79 


wisdom  and  intelligence  have  life,  and  whereas  happi- 
ness is  adjoined  to  such  life,  eternal  happiness  is  also 
what  is  signified  by  life."  The  antithesis  to  this,  the  real 
life,  is  that  death  which  follows  the  extinction  of  spirit- 
ual life.  It  is  the  birth  and  development  of  the  real  life 
in  this  sense,  with  which  human  science  has  found  itself 
hitherto  so  incompetent  to  cope.  And  it  is  difficult  to 
see  how  any  one  who  is  a  seeker  for  truth,  and  not 
merely  for  a  confirmation  of  preconceived  opinion,  can 
read  Swedenborg's  exegesis  of  it  without  approving  of 
his  interpretation  and  without  finding  any  difficulties  of 
a  scientific  character  by  which  he  may  have  been  dis- 
turbed, completely  dispelled;  without  finding  in  it  ''the 
history  of  his  own  life  in  its  progress  from  darkness, 
desolation  and  chaos  to  the  glory,  beauty  and  peace  of 
an  endless  Sabbath." 

I  am  here  tempted  to  quote  a  very  striking  passage 
on  this  very  subject  from  the  writings  of  William  Law 
to  show  how  one  of  the  most  eminent  divines  of  the 
English  Established  Church  reached  the  same  con- 
clusion as  Swedenborg,  so  far  as  to  consider  the  word 
''beginning,"  in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  to  refer  to 
a  state  and  not  to  a  period  in  time.  And  curiously 
enough  he  published  this  conclusion  about  twenty  years 
after  the  appearance  of  Swedenborg's  commentary,  in 
a  paper  entitled  ''An  Appeal  to  all  that  doubt  or  disbe- 
lieve the  truths  of  the  Gospel,  whether  they  be  Deists, 
Arians,  Socinians  or  Nominal  Christians,"  etc.* 

*This  appeal  appeared  in  1768.  The  first  volume  of  the  Ar- 
cana Ccelestia,  containing  Swedenborg's  commentary  upon  the 
first  chapter  of  Genesis,  was  published  in  1749.  It  is  known 
that  Law  was  a  subscriber  for  the  Arcana,  but  neither  in  what 
is  quoted  here,  nor  in  anything  he  ever  pubHshed,  is  there  any 

80 


Properly  and  strictly  speaking,  nothing  can  begin 
to  be;  The  Beginning  of  everything  is  nothing  more 
than  its  beginning  to  be  in  a  JSfew  State.  Thus  Time 
itself  does  not  begin  to  be,  but  Duration,  which  al- 
ways was,  began  to  be  measured  by  the  Earth's  turn- 
ing round,  or  the  rising  and  setting  of  the  Sun,  and 
that  is  called  the  Beginning  of  Time,  which  is  properly 
speaking,  only  the  Beginning  of  the  measure  of  Dura- 
tion. Thus  it  is  with  all  temporal  Nature  and  all  the 
Qualities  and  Powers  of  temporal  Beings  that  live  in 
it.  No  Quality  or  Power  of  Nature  then  began  to  be, 
but  such  Qualities  and  Powers  as  had  been  from  all 
Eternity,  began  then  to  be  in  a  New  State,  Ask  what 
Time  is;  it  is  nothing  else  but  something  of  Eternal 
Duration  become  finite,  measurable  and  transitory. 
Ask  what  Fire,  Light,  Darkness,  Air,  Water  and 
Earth  are ;  they  are  and  can  be  nothing  else  but  some 
Eternal  Things  become  gross,  finite,  measurable, 
divisible  and  transitory.  For  if  there  could  be  Fire 
that  did  not  spring  out  of  Eternal  Fire,  then  there 
might  be  Time  that  did  not  come  out  of  Eternity. 

It  is  thus  with  every  temporary  thing  and  the  quali- 
ties of  it ;  it  is  not  the  beginning  of  Nothing,  but  only 
of  a  New  State  of  something  that  existed  before  of 
Eternal  Nature,  and  is  nothing  else  but  so  much  of 
Eternal  Nature  changed  from  its  eternal  to  a  tem- 
poral condition.  Fire  did  not  begin  to  be ;  Light  did 
not  begin  to  be ;  Water  and  Earth  did  not  begin  to  be 
when  this  temporary  World  first  appeared,  but  all 
these  things  came  out  of  their  eternal  state  into  a 
lower,  divided,  compacted  and  transitory  state.  Hear- 
ing, Seeing,  Tasting,  Smelling,  Feeling,  did  not  then 
begin  to  be,  when  God  first  created  the  creatures  of 
this  World ;  they  only  came  to  be  Qualities  and  Powers 

direct  allusion  to  Swedenborg  by  name  or  to  his  works.  Law's 
practical  works  all  betray  an  acquaintance,  though  hardly  a 
familiarity,  with  his  writings. 

8i 


of  a  lower  and  more  imperfect  order  of  Beings  than 
they  had  been  before.  Figures  and  their  relations  did 
not  begin  to  be,  when  material  circles,  squares,  etc., 
were  first  made,  but  these  Figures  and  Relations  be- 
gan then  to  appear  in  a  lower  State  than  they  had  done 
before;  and  so  it  must  be  said  of  our  temporal  Nature 
and  everything  in  it.  It  is  only  something  of  Eternal 
Nature  separated,  changed  or  created  into  a  tem- 
porary state  or  condition.* 

The  undervaluation  of  the  Bible  is  the  infirmity  of 
the  flocks  and  the  vice  of  the  shepherds  throughout 
Christendom.  Both  treat  the  Bible  mostly  as  the  sav- 
ages treat  the  soil,  harvesting  and  hunting  only  what 
grows  spontaneously  on  the  surface.  They  too  rarely 
turn  it  up  to  see  what  wealth  is  stored  up  for  them  be- 
neath. Both  look  with  more  or  less  suspicion  or  con- 
tempt upon  those  who  explore  and  toil  for  the  hidden 
wealth.  This  disposition  is  neither  logical  nor  theolog- 
ical. No  one  can  read  the  Bible,  however  superficially, 
without  finding  himself  occasionally  obliged  to  go  be- 
yond the  literal  to  the  spiritual  meaning  of  its  lan- 
guage to  get  any  edification  from  it. 

Solomon  proposed  to  build  a  house  for  the  name  of 
the  Lord  (I  Kings,  v.  5) ;  and  every  time  we  utter  the 
Lord's  prayer  we  say,  "Hallowed  be  Thy  Name.'  How 
shall  the  literalist  expound  these  words?  What  does  a 
name  need  of  a  house?  How  does  it  occupy  a  house? 
What  kind  of  a  house  can  a  name  occupy?  Farther  on 
in  the  9th  Chapter  of  Kings,  the  Lord  says,  "I  have  hal- 
lowed this  house  which  thou  hast  built  to  put  my  name 
there  forever,  and  mine  eyes  and  mine  heart  shall  be 

♦William  Law's  Works,  Vol.  vi.,  p.  114. 
82 


there  perpetually."  The  young  and  the  very  ignorant 
when  they  read  these  passages  may  suppose  that  in  some 
way  these  statements  are  literally  true;  that  the  house 
was  built  for  a  name,  and  that  God  did  somehow  put  His 
eyes  and  heart  there.  When,  however,  they  begin  to  re- 
flect, it  dawns  upon  them  that  the  name  here  referred  to 
must  signify  something  more  than  the  numeral  to  which 
the  soldier  or  prisoner  answers  at  roll  call.  No  educated 
clergyman  would  construe  these  words  literally.  They 
would  generally  treat  it  as  figurative,  or  metaphorical, 
merely  leaving  the  impression  that  another  writer  hav- 
ing occasion  to  record  the  same  story  might  have  em- 
ployed quite  different  words  and  illustrations.  In  this 
way  God's  Word  is  treated  as  if  it  were  subject  to  all  the 
fluctuations  and  caprices  of  human  speech,  a  treatment 
entirely  irreconcilable  with  its  Divine  authenticity. 

So  when  we  pray  the  Father  to  give  us  our  "daily 
bread,"  no  inconsiderable  portion  of  the  Christian  world 
regard  this  as  simply  a  prayer  that  their  daily  recurring 
bodily  appetite  may  be  gratified,  assuming  that  the  word 
"bread"  here  is  only  a  general  term  for  any  suitable 
nutriment  for  the  body.  But  one  can  have  read  the 
Bible  to  very  little  purpose  not  to  have  discovered  that 
the  bread  in  this  prayer  signifies  not  only  the  kind  of 
food  that  is  essential  to  the  growth  and  development  of 
the  body,  but  also  of  higher  and  more  enduring  life  in 
man,  in  other  words  spiritual  food;  food  suited  to  the 
nourishment  of  our  spiritual  life  day  by  day. 

Bread  (from  grain),  says  Swedenborg,  in  general 
corresponds  to  the  affection  of  all  good,  because  it 
supports  life  more  than  other  things,  and  because  alf 
food  is  meant  by  it.    On  account  of  this  correspondence 

83 


the  Lord  is  called  the  Bread  of  Life.  "Thou  feedest  them 
with  the  bread  of  tears/'  says  the  Psalmist  (Ps.  Ixxx.  5). 
"The  virtuous  woman/'  says  Solomon,  "looketh  well  to 
the  ways  of  her  household  and  eateth  not  the  bread  of 
idleness''  (Prov.,  ch.  xxxi.  27).  It  is  obvious  enough 
that  in  neither  of  the  cases  here  cited  is  there  any  ques- 
tion of  the  nourishment  of  the  body  merely.  Nor  when 
Moses  said  to  the  Children  of  Israel,  "Neither  fear  the 
people  of  the  land,  they  are  bread  for  us."  The  people 
of  the  land  here  referred  to,  are  the  lusts,  the  passions, 
the  evil  propensities  of  every  human  heart,  and  "he 
that  overcometh  them  shall  not  be  hurt  of  second 
death."  "They  shall  eat  of  the  bread  of  life."  "He 
that  overcometh  shall  sit  with  me  in  my  throne."  Such 
is  the  kind  of  bread  that  Moses  promised  to  those  of 
his  followers  who  bravely  pursued  and  overcame  the 
enemies  of  their  own  households. 

Again,  when  the  Lord  said  to  His  disciples,  "I  am 
the  Vine  and  ye  are  the  branches,"  He  was  not  teaching 
vegetable  physiology  nor  talking  poetry,  as  any  one  may 
see  by  noting  the  stations  of  dignity  and  consequence 
occupied  by  the  vine  and  every  product  of  the  vine,  as 
well  as  the  "branch"  in  nearly  every  book  of  the  Bible. 

The  prophet  forecasts  the  birth  of  our  Saviour  in 
these  words :  "Behold  a  Virgin  shall  conceive  and  bear 
a  Son,  and  shall  call  his  name  Immanuel.  Butter  and 
honey  shall  he  eat,  that  he  may  know  to  refuse  the  evil 
and  choose  the  good."* 

What  have  butter  and  honey  in  their  literal  sense  to 
do  with  our  choice  between  good  and  evil  ?  It  is  no  ir- 
reverence, we  hope,  to  say  that  if  it  has  no  other  than 
*  Isaiah  vii.   14. 

84 


the  literal  meaning  it  is  nonsense;  but  as  representing 
and  corresponding  with  the  faculty  by  which  we  love  the 
good  and  eschew  evil  it  is  everything. 

When  we  read  in  John  that  Jesus  cured  the  blind  man 
by  anointing  his  eyes  with  His  own  spittle  mingled  with 
clay,  it  is  our  first  impulse  to  ask  why  did  He  not  prevent 
the  man  becoming  blind,  and  why  resort  to  such  a  pro- 
cess to  cure  him  when  He  had  but  to  say  the  word  and 
the  man's  sight  w^ould  have  been  restored?  Obviously 
something  more  than  blindness  of  the  body  was  involved 
in  this  miracle,  and  something  more  than  a  simple  eye 
ointment  was  employed  in  his  cure.  It  is  not  until  we 
observe  how  frequently  "blindness''  is  used  to  express 
the  absence  of  divine  light  that  we  see  how  perfectly 
our  Saviour's  remedy  was  adapted  to  the  infirmity. 

If  some  words  in  any  one  book  of  the  Bible  have 
a  spiritual  or  interior  meaning,  why  not  in  all  of  that 
book  ?  Can  a  motive  be  conceived  for  giving  a  spiritual 
meaning  to  some  word  of  a  Divine  message  and  not 
to  all  ?  Is  not  a  discrimination  equivalent  to  an  impeach- 
ment of  its  Divine  authorship? 

Swedenborg  tells  us,  as  I  have  already  remarked, 
that  in  the  Most  Ancient  Church  before  the  flood,  the 
language  of  the  world  was  entirely  correspondential, 
and  when  natural  phenomena  were  named  they  were  but 
as  words  that  express  the  spiritual  idea  with  which  they 
corresponded,  the  phenomena  occupying  no  more  of  the 
speaker's  thought  or  attention  than  the  paper  or  letters 
of  a  book  do  of  the  thought  or  attention  of  its  reader. 

At  the  Deluge,  the  children  of  men  had  so  far  lost 
the  correspondential  language  that  the  phenomena  of 
nature  had  practically  ceased  to  be  intelligible  to  them ; 

85 


they  had  become  as  a  page  of  a  book  to  a  child  who  can- 
not read,  who  can  spell  out  the  characters,  but  having 
little  or  no  suspicion  of  the  thought  those  characters 
were  intended  to  express. 

It  is  perhaps  the  greatest,  as  it  is  the  most  nearly- 
universal  delusion  of  mankind  to  ascribe  causality  to 
physical  phenomena;  to  suppose  the  events  in  nature, 
of  which  we  take  note  through  the  senses,  to  be  some- 
thing more  or  other  than  a  series  of  effects  from  the 
spiritual  causes  which  they  represent.  True,  the  order 
and  connexion  of  events  and  circumstances  appear  to  us 
for  wise  reasons,  which  I  will  not  interrupt  this  narra- 
tive to  explain,  to  stand  towards  each  other  in  the  nature 
of  cause  and  effect;  but  the  harmony  and  order  which 
we  mistake  for  cause  and  effect  are  but  the  inevitable 
consequences  of  the  order,  connexion  and  succession  of 
their  spiritual  causes,  and  of  the  Divine  order  reigning 
through  the  whole. 

This  correspondency,  therefore,  between  the  two 
worlds  of  spirit  and  of  matter,  of  cause  and  effect,  must 
be  universal.  It  can  admit  of  no  exception.  It  does  not 
consist  in  affixing  certain  abitrary  meanings  to  certain 
objects,  nor  in  the  tracing  of  a  metaphorical  or  poetical 
resemblance  between  a  certain  state  of  the  mind  and  a 
certain  event  in  nature,  but  it  is  the  necessary  link,  the 
umbilical  cord,  which  unites  the  spiritual  world  with  its 
natural  progeny,  and  in  accordance  with  which  the  state 
of  the  human  will  and  understanding  are  represented  in 
the  sensible  appearances  of  space  and  time. 

"We  must  not  suffer  the  natural  semblance  of  phy- 
sical causes  to  affect  our  mental  sight,"  says  a  pro- 
found student  of  Swedenborg's  spiritual  philosophy, 

86 


"for  from  physical  causes  there  is  but  one  step  to  the 
behef  in  accidental  cause,  or  in  the  existence  of  a 
cause  without  an  end  or  purpose.  But  he  whose  eye 
is  spirtually  enlightened  will  see  that  from  the  uni- 
versality of  the  Divine  Providence  operating  from 
ends  through  causes  in  effects,  there  can  be  no  such 
thing  as  accidents;  for  those  things  which  are  falsely 
considered  accidental,  with  all  their  consequences, 
have  their  causes  as  much  in  the  spiritual  world  or 
state  as  the  words  of  language  have  their  causes  in 
the  thoughts  which  they  indicate;  or,  as  the  expres- 
sion of  the  countenance  is  an  effect  which  unfolds  and 
represents  the  state  of  the  affections/'* 

"Wherever  in  the  universe,"  says  Swedenborg, 
"any  object  appears,  it  is  a  representative  of  the 
Lord's  kingdom;  so  much  so,  that  there  is  actually 
nothing  in  the  atmospheric  and  starry  universe, 
nothing  in  the  earth  and  its  three  kingdoms,  that 
does  not,  after  its  kind,  represent.  For  in  nature 
the  whole,  and  every  part  of  the  whole,  are  ulti- 
mate images.  From  the  Divine  essence  are  celes- 
tial states  of  goodness,  and  from  these,  spiritual 
states  of  truth,  and,  from  both  of  them  con- 
jointly, natural  objects;  and  because  all  things, 
as  well  as  each  thing  singly,  subsist  from  the 
Divine  essence — that  is,  continually  exist  from  Him 
— and  as  all  their  derivatives  must  of  necessity  repre- 
sent those  states  through  which  they  become  extant, 
therefore,  it  follows  that  the  visible  is  nothing  else  but 
a  theatre,  representative  of  the  Lord's  kingdom,  and 
this  latter  a  theatre  representative  of  the  Lord  Him- 
self." t 

"Throughout  nature  there  is  hot  a  single  thing 
which  can  exist  unless  it  have  a  correspondency  with 

*  The  Science  of  Correspondence  and  other   Spiritual  Doc- 
trine, etc.,  by  Charles  Augustus  Tulk. 
"f  Arcana  Coelestia,  n.  3483. 

87 


the  spiritual  world,  for  without  it,  it  would  want  a 
cause  for  its  existence,  and,  consequently,  for  its  sub- 
sistence also.  For  all  things  in  nature  are  nothing 
else  but  effects,  the  causes  of  which  are  in  the  spiritual 
world,  and  the  causes  of  these  which  are  ends,  in  the 
interior  heaven.  The  effect  cannot  subsist  unless  the 
cause  be  continually  in  it,  for  the  cause  ceasing,  the 
effect  must  cease  also.  The  effect  considered  in  itself 
is  nothing  else  but  the  cause,  but  so  extrinsically 
clothed  as  to  be  subservient  to  the  cause  by  enabling 
it  to  act  in  a  lower  sphere.  What  is  here  said  of  the 
effect  in  relation  to  its  cause,  is  equally  true  of  the 
cause  in  relation  to  its  end.  For  a  cause  is  nothing 
unless  it  exist  from  its  cause  which  is  the  end;  for 
without  an  end  it  is  a  cause  devoid  of  order,  and  with- 
out order  nothing  can  be  effected."* 


VIII 

The;  Doctrine  of  Correspondences  of  which  I  have 
endeavoured  to  give  the  reader  some  notion — he  must 
turn  to  Swedenborg's  exegetical  writings  for  an  ade- 
quate comprehension  of  it — has  been  more  or  less  recog- 
nized in  all  ages ;  we  find  traces  of  it  in  the  literature  of 
all  nations.  Saint  Paul  frequently  refers  to  it;  it  was 
distinctly  recognized  by  the  Fathers. 

Origen  in  his  account  of  Sarah  and  Abimelech,  of 
Isaac  and  Rebecca,  and  of  the  midwives  of  Egypt,  says : 

If  any  choose  to  understand  this  merely  according 
to  the  letter,  he  ought  to  seek  his  hearers  rather 
among  the  Jews  than  among  Christians. 

*  Arcana  Coelestia,  n.  571 1. 
88 


The  writings  of  the  mystics  owe  pretty  much  all  of 
whatever  vitality  they  possessed  to  the  spiritual  signifi- 
cance they  have  discerned  within  the  letter  of  the  Word. 
During  the  interval  between  the  Council  of  Nice  and 
the  illumination  of  Swedenborg,  the  Christian  Church 
was  engaged  in  struggles  with  the  more  or  less  bar- 
barous elements  of  society  with  which  it  had  to  deal, 
elements  to  which  the  letter  appealed  more  powerfully 
than  its  spirit.  During  this  long  interval,  the  Church 
was  preoccupied  first  with  the  struggle  between  papal 
and  secular  sovereigns  for  supremacy,  and  later  with  the 
prelatical  struggle  which  preceded  and  followed  the 
Reformation.  The  triumph  of  Protestantism  in  Ger- 
many and  England  emancipated  Science  and  led  to  a 
more  careful  study  of  the  constitution  and  laws  of 
nature,  and  not  only  prepared  the  Christian  world,  but 
compelled  it  to  go  to  the  Bible  itself  and  not  to  councils 
nor  hierarchies  for  a  reconciliation  of  its  sacred  teach- 
ings with  the  equally  sacred  teachings  of  Nature.  Swe- 
denborg attended  the  lectures  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton, 
whose  discoveries  gave  the  first  important  and  enduring 
impulse  in  Europe  to  the  study  of  Natural  Science,  and 
whose  theological  writings  also  betrayed  an  intelligent 
discontent  with  the  notions  of  the  Trinity*  then  taught 
by  the  Established  Church,  circumstances  both  indicat- 
ing him  in  a  special  sense,  a  providential  precursor  of 
Swedenborg. 

Blaise  Pascal,  whose  premature  death  deprived 
France  of  one  of  the  most  acute  and  brilliant  intellects 
she  has  yet  to  boast  of,  and  whose  piety  was  not  less 

*  "Newton's  Historical  Account  of  Two  Notable  Corruptions 
of  the  Scripture,"  addressed  to  John  Locke. 

89 


extraordinary  than  his  genius,  came  as  near  as  any 
one  not  specially  illuminated  for  that  mission,  in  di\'in- 
ing  the  structural  principle  of  the  Word  as  disclosed 
by  Swedenborg. 

His  argument  that  it  was  written  with  an  internal 
or  spiritual,  as  well  as  with  an  external  or  natural  sense, 
is  original  and  striking,  though  he  gives  no  e\4dence  of 
possessing  any  exact  knowledge  of  the  science  of  corres- 
pondence, or  of  ha\dng  any  key  to  the  precise  spiritual 
significance  of  the  natural  phenomena  referred  to  in  the 
Word,  except  so  far  as  their  significance  is  disclosed  in 
the  Bible  itself.  He  inferred  an  internal  meaning  as 
Columbus  inferred  a  western  route  to  the  Indies,  ^^'hat 
that  internal  meaning  was,  he  had  of  com-se  only  a  con- 
jectural knowledge. 

In  the  sixteenth  Article  of  his  Pensees  Pascal  says: 

To  prove  both  Testaments  at  once  we  have  but  to 
see  if  the  prophecies  of  the  one  are  accomplished  in 
the  other.  To  test  the  prophecies,  it  is  necessan,-  to 
understand  them,  for  if  we  believe  they  have  but  a 
single  sense,  it  is  certain  that  the  Messiah  will  not 
have  come;  but  if  they  have  a  double  sense  (or  a 
literal  and  a  spiritual),  it  is  certain  that  He  will  have 
come  in  Jesus  Christ. 

Farther  on,  and  speaking  of  the  literal  inconsistencies 
of  the  Old  Testament,  he  says : 

It  is  said  that  the  law  shall  be  changed  ;*  that  the 
sacrifice  shall  be  changedt.  That  they  shall  be  with- 
out a  king,  J  without  prince  and  without  sacrifice ;  that 
he  will  make  a  new  covenant.  That  the  law  shall  be 
renewed;  that  the  precepts  they  have  received  are  not 

*  Jeremiah  xxxL  31.  f  Daniel  ix.  2y. 

fHosea  iiL  4. 

90 


good.*  That  their  sacrifices  are  abominable.t  That 
God  has  not  asked  them.:^ 

On  the  other  hand,  we  are  elsewhere  told  that  the 
law  shall  endure  forever,  §  that  this  covenant  shall 
be  eternal.  II  That  the  sacrifice  shall  be  etemal,1[ 
that  the  sceptre  shall  never  depart  from  them  till  the 
King  eternal  arrives.** 

All  these  passages,  are  they  to  be  accepted  liter- 
ally ?  No.  Are  they  all  to  be  taken  figuratively  ?  No ; 
but  as  reality  or  figure.  But  the  first  excluding  a 
literal  interpretation,  indicates  that  it  is  but  figura- 
tive. All  these  things  together  can  not  be  interpreted 
literally ;  they  may  all,  however,  be  interpreted  figura- 
tively. Then  they  are  not  meant  to  be  interpreted 
literally,  but  figuratively.  Agnus  occisns  est  ah  ori- 
gine  mundiA^ 

A  portrait  imports  absence  and  presence,  what  is 
pleasant  and  what  is  not  pleasant.  To  know  if  the 
law  and  the  sacrifices  are  to  be  regarded  literally 
or  figuratively  we  must  see  if  the  prophets  in  speaking 
of  these  matters  rested  their  view  and  thought  in  the 
letter  so  as  not  to  see  but  this  ancient  covenant,  or  if 
they  saw  something  more  of  which  it  was  but  the  pic- 
ture ;  for  in  a  portrait  one  sees  the  thing  figured.  For 
this  purpose  it  is  only  necessary  to  study  what  they 
say. 

When  they  say  the  covenant  shall  be  eternal,  do 
they  mean  to  speak  of  a  covenant  which  shall  be 
changed,  and  so  of  the  sacrifices? 

The  figure  has  two  meanings.  When  one  takes  up 
an  important  letter  where  he  finds  a  clear  meaning, 

*  Ezekiel  xx.  25,  31.  f  Isaiah  1.  13. 

JHosea  vi.  6.  §  Baruch  iv.  i. 

II  Genesis  xvii.  13,  19.  f  Jeremiah  xxx.  18. 

**  Genesis  xlix.  10. 

tt  These   words  of  the  Apocalypse  xiii.   8,   respond   to  the 

thought  of  Pascal,  that  the  sacrifice  of  the  Jews  pre-figured  the 
eternal  sacrifice,  that  of  Jesus  Christ 

91 


but  wherein  nevertheless  it  is  stated  that  the  sense  is 
veiled  and  obscured,  that  it  is  concealed  so  that  he 
shall  see  this  letter  without  seeing  it,  and  shall  under- 
stand it  without  understanding  it,  what  ought  he  to 
conclude,  if  not  that  it  is  a  figure  with  a  double  mean- 
ing, more  especially  when  he  encounters  manifest 
contradictions  in  the  literal  sense  ?  How  highly,  then, 
ought  we  to  esteem  those  who  uncover  this  figure  and 
reveal  to  us  its  concealed  meaning,  especially  when 
the  doctrines  they  derive  from  it  are  altogether  nat- 
ural and  clear.  It  is  that  which  Jesus  Christ  and  the 
apostles  have  done.  He  has  removed  the  seal.  He  has 
lifted  the  veil,  He  has  uncovered  the  spirit.  We  are 
thus  taught  that  the  enemies  of  man  are  his  passions, 
that  the  Redeemer  should  be  spiritual,  that  He  should 
come  to  us  twice,  once  as  a  man  of  sorrows  to  humil- 
iate the  proud,  the  second  time  in  glory  to  raise  the 
humble;  that  Jesus  Christ  should  be  God  and  man. 
The  prophets  have  said  plainly  that  Israel  should  al- 
ways be  loved  of  God,  and  that  the  law  should  be 
eternal.  And  they  have  also  said  that  their  meaning 
would  not  be  understood,  that  it  was  veiled.'' 

Since  Pascal's  time  the  necessity  of  looking  beyond 
the  letter  of  the  Word  for  the  means  of  reconciling  its 
teachings  with  the  revelations  of  modern  science  has 
been  extensively  recognized  by  many  of  the  most  prom- 
inent and  influential  members  of  the  ^'Orthodox 
Church.'' 

"You  are  to  observe,"  says  William  Law,  in  his 
discourse  on  The  Spirit  of  Love,  "that  body  begins 
not  from  itself,  but  is  all  that  it  is,  whether  pure  or 
impure ;  has  all  that  it  has,  whether  of  light  or  dark- 
ness, and  works  all  that  it  works,  whether  of  good 
or  evil,  merely  from  spirit.  For  nothing,  my  friend, 
acts  in  the  whole  universe  of  things  but  spirit  alone. 

92 


And  the  state,  condition  and  degree  of  every  spirit  is 
only  and  solely  opened  by  the  state,  form,  condition 
and  qualities  of  the  body  that  belongs  to  it,  for  the 
body  can  have  no  nature,  form,  condition  or  quality, 
hut  that  which  the  spirit  that  brings  it  forth  gives 
to  it:''' 

Later,  in  the  same  paper,t  Law  says : 

*'And  now,  gentlemen,  you  may  easily  apprehend 
how  and  why  a  God  in  whose  holy  Deity  no  spark  of 
wrath  or  partiality  can  possibly  arise,  but  who  is,  from 
eternity  to  eternity,  only  following  forth  in  love,  good- 
ness and  blessing  to  everything  capable  of  it,  could  yet 
say  of  the  children  before  they  were  born  or  had  done 
either  good  or  evil.  'Jacob  have  I  loved,  and  Esau 
have  I  hated/  It  is  because  Esau  signifies  the  earth- 
ly, beastly  nature  that  came  from  sin,  and  Jacob  sig- 
nifies the  incorruptible  seed  of  the  Word  that  is  to 
overcome  Esau  and  change  his  mortal  into  immor- 
tality." 

John  Keble,  now  most  widely  known  as  the  author  of 
The  Christian  Year,  in  No.  89  of  Tracts  of  the  Times, 
the  purpose  of  which  was  to  vindicate  the  fathers  of  the 
Church  from  the  supposed  stigma  attached  to  them  on 
account  of  their  alleged  mysticism,  expressed  himself  in 
language  which  would  scarcely  have  been  used  by  any 
one  not  more  or  less  imbued  with  the  views  if  not  the 
teachings  of  Swedenborg,  in  regard  to  the  structural 
principle  of  the  Word. 

"The  Scriptures  deal  largely  in  symbolical  language 
taken  from  natural  objects.  The  chosen  vehicle  for 
the  most  direct  divine  communication  has  always  been 
that  form  of  speech  which  most  readily  adopts  and  in- 

*  The  Works  of  William  Law,  Vol.  viii.,  p.  22. 
tP.  168. 

93 


vites  such  imagery,  viz.,  the  poetical.  Is  there  not 
something  very  striking  to  a  thoughtful,  reverential 
mind,  in  the  simple  fact  of  symbolic  language  occur- 
ring in  Scripture  at  all  ?  That  is,  when  truths  Scrip- 
tural  are  represented  in  Scripture  by  visible  and  sen- 
sible imagery.  Consider  what  this  really  comes  to. 
The  author  of  Scripture  is  the  author  of  Nature.  He 
made  His  creatures  what  they  are,  upholds  them  in 
their  being,  modifies  it  at  His  will,  knows  all  their 
secret  relations,  associations  and  properties.  We  know 
not  how  much  there  may  be  far  beyond  metaphor  and 
similitude,  in  His  using  the  name  of  any  one  of  His 
creatures  in  a  translated  sense,  to  shadow  out  some- 
thing invisible.  But  thus  far  we  may  seem  to  under- 
stand, that  the  object  thus  spoken  of  by  Him,  is  so  far 
taken  out  of  the  number  of  ordinary  figures  of  speech 
and  resources  of  language,  and  partakes  henceforth 
of  the  nature  of  a  type. 

*'The  text  'The  invisible  things  from  the  creation 
of  the  world  are  clearly  seen,  being  understood  by  the 
things  that  are  made,'  lays  down  a  principle  or  canon 
of  mystical  interpretation  for  the  works  of  nature.  It 
is  the  characteristic  tendency  of  poetical  minds  to 
make  the  world  of  sense,  from  beginning  to  end,  sym- 
bolical of  the  absent  and  unseen ;  and  poetry  was  the 
ordained  vehicle  of  revelation,  till  God  was  made  man- 
ifest in  the  flesh.'' 

Those  who  are  familiar  with  Keble's  Christian  Year 
cannot  fail  to  have  been  struck  with  the  following  im- 
pressive lines,  in  which  the  Doctrine  of  Correspondence 
between  the  Natural  and  Spiritual  Worlds  is  distinctly 
recognized : 

There  is  a  Book,  who  runs  may  read, 

Which  heavenly  truth  imparts; 
And  all  the  lore  its  scholars  need, 

Pure  eyes  and  Christian  hearts. 

94 


The  works  of  God  above,  below, 

Within  us  and  around, 
Are  pages  in  that  Book,  to  shew 

How  Gk)d  Himself  is  found. 


The  worlds   are  airs;   'tis  only  sin 

Forbids  us  to  descry 
The  mystic  heaven  and  earth  within, 

Plain  as  the  sea  and  sky. 

Thou  who  has  given  me  eyes  to  see, 

And  love  this  sight  so  fair; 
Give  me  a  heart  to  find  out  Thee, 

And  read  Thee  everywhere. 

Few  men  differ  more  widely  in  their  general  tone  of 
thought  than  Keble  and  the  late  Charles  Kingsley,  and 
yet  Kingsley  like  Keble  appears  to  have  been  quite  as 
deeply  impressed  with  the  mysterious  relations  between 
the  Natural  and  Spiritual,  or  the  visible  and  the  invisible 
worlds.  In  fact,  he  went  beyond  Keble  in  the  extent  to 
which  he  recognized  the  spiritual  language  of  nature. 

"The  great  Mysticism,"  he  says,  "is  the  belief 
which  is  becoming  every  day  stronger  with  me,  that 
all  symmetrical  objects,  aye,  and  perhaps  all  forms, 
colors  and  scents  which  show  organization  or  ar- 
rangement, are  types  of  some  spiritual  truth  or  exist- 
ence of  a  grade  between  the  symbolical  and  the  mystic 
type.  Everything  seems  to  be  full  of  God's  reflex  if 
we  could  but  see  it.  *  *  The  visible  world  is  in 
some  mysterious  way  a  pattern  or  symbol  of  the  in- 
visible one ;  its  physical  laws  are  the  analogues  of  the 
spiritual  laws  of  the  eternal  world."* 

In  a  review  of  Vaughan's  Hours  with  the  Mystics, 
Kingsley  says  again : 

*  Life  of  Kingsley,  i.  'j*j, 
95 


"The  works  of  God  in  creation  and  providence,  be- 
sides their  uses  in  this  life,  appeared  to  the  old  writers 
as  so  many  intended  tokens  from  the  Almighty  to  as- 
sure us  of  some  spiritual  fact  or  other  which  it  con- 
cerns us  to  know." 


How  strange  it  seems  for  a  man  of  as  wide  reading 
as  Kingsley,  to  be  groping  about  in  the  dark  for  the  ele- 
ments of  a  body  of  truth,  which  a  century  before  Swe- 
denborg  had  unfolded  as  fully  and  as  clearly  as  the  prin- 
ciples of  any  modern  science. 

We  do  not  realize  how  large  a  proportion  of  our 
familiar  speech  depends  for  its  excellence,  by  which  I 
mean  its  intelligibility,  upon  what  we  suppose  to  be  the 
relations  and  inter-dependence  of  nature  and  thought. 
When  we  talk  of  "borrowing  trouble,"  of  the  "fluctua- 
tions of  fortune,"  the  "milk  of  human  kindness,"  of  "a 
hard  head,"  "the  scythe  of  Time,"  "an  elevated  charac- 
ter," "the  frosts  of  age,"  "rosemary  for  remembrance," 
"a  sweet  face,"  "refined  taste,"  or  when  we  say  of  a 
man  that  he  is  "true  as  steel,"  "cold  as  ice,"  "blind 
to  his  true  interests,"  "deaf  to  reason,"  that  he  has  "a 
voice  of  silver,"  "a  face  of  brass,"  etc.,  we  are  more  or 
less  rudely  interpreting  the  language  and  lessons  of 
nature. 

It  is  the  great  weakness  of  modern  science  that  its 
students  do  mostly  limit  their  investigations  to  phenome- 
na— that  is,  to  facts  cognizable  by  the  senses — never 
allowing  themselves  to  look  beyond  the  phenomena  for 
the  Divine  purpose  of  which  they  are  the  offspring.  In- 
stead of  looking  up  from  nature  to  nature's  God,  to  as- 
certain the  will  or  motive  which  must  have  preceded  the 

96 


p 


phenomena,  and  inhabits  them,  they  limit  their  inquiries 
to  the  purely  phenomenal  relations  of  nature. 

The  man  who  did  not  consider  whether  the  hand  ex- 
tended to  him  by  an  acquaintance  was  intended  as  a 
salutation  or  a  blow,  would  be  classed  as  an  idiot;  and 
yet  does  the  modern  scientist  work  upon  any  higher 
plane  than  this  idiot?  He  will  allow  himself  to  know 
and  name  all  the  letters  on  the  printed  page  of  nature, 
and  there  he  stops.  He  does  not  attempt  to  translate 
and  understand  the  higher  lessons  that  page  was  in- 
tended to  teach.  Hence  it  is,  perhaps,  that  the  world  is 
so  little  indebted  to  the  devotees  of  natural  science  for 
ethical  or  religious  truths,  the  only  truths  which  in  the 
long  run  are  of  any  value,  and  the  very  truths  which 
natural  phenomena  were  specially  intended  to  impart  to 
us.  The  time  must  come  when  no  one  will  be  regarded 
as  a  philosopher,  however  familiar  he  may  be  with  the 
phenomena  of  nature,  or  eminent  as  an  experimentalist, 
unless  he  looks  beyond  physical  to  spiritual  causes,  and 
does  what  in  him  lies  to  put  his  fingers  upon  the  chords 
of  Divine  harmony  which  connect  every  thing  and  event 
in  nature  with  their  Author. 

One  reason,  perhaps  the  only  reason,  why  poetry  and 
poets  have  always  enjoyed  a  larger  measure  of  worldly 
esteem  than  scientists  of  the  same  relative  rank,  may 
fairly  be  attributed  to  the  fact  that  all  genuine  poetry 
depends  largely  for  its  charm  upon  its  success  in  divin- 
ing the  thoughts  which  lie  concealed  in  nature  as  the 
statue  is  concealed  in  the  block  of  native  marble.  Is  it 
not  the  conatus  of  every  true  poet  to  decipher  the  spirit- 
ual truths  which  are  expressed  in  the  phenomenal  world, 
and  which  the  Master  has  been  pleased  to  adapt  es- 

97 


pecially  to  our  earthly  limitations?  May  not  the  merit 
of  all,  or  at  least  of  the  highest  order  of  poetry,  be 
traced  to  the  skill  of  the  poet  in  drawing  illustrations  of 
abstract  truth  from  natural  objects?  Let  us  turn  to  the 
pages  of  the  first  of  English  poets  to  see  whether  there 
is  anything  chimerical  in  this  view.  In  each  of  the  fol- 
lowing passages  it  will  be  found  that  natural  objects 
stand  for,  represent,  correspond  with  and  express  some 
abstract  idea,  thought  or  sentiment  of  which  the  object 
itself  could  of  course  have  had  no  conception;  derive 
from  what  is  material  somewhat  that  is  spiritual  and 
for  that  purpose  only  is  the  material  alluded  to. 

My  salad  days 
When  I  was  green  in  judgment. 

— Antony  and  Cleopatra,  Act  I.,  Sc.  5. 
But  O,  how  bitter  a  thing  it  is  to  look  into  happiness  through 
another  man's  eyes. — As  You  Like  It,  Act  V.,  Sc.  2. 
Thou  art  thy  mother's  glass,  and  she  in  thee 

Calls  back  the  lovely  April  of  her  prime; 
So  thou  through  windows  of  thine  age  shalt  see, 

Despite  of  wrinkles,  this  thy  golden  time. — Sonnet  III. 

Our  life,  exempt  from  public  haunt, 
Finds  tongues  in  trees,  books  in  the  running  brooks. 
Sermons  in  stones,  and  good  in  everything. 

— As  You  like  It,  Act  IL,  Sc.  i. 
Smooth  runs  the  water  where  the  brook  is  deep. 

— Second  part  of  Henry  VL,  Act  III.,  Sc.  i. 
Out  of  the  nettle  danger,  we  pluck  this  flower  safety. 

— First  part  of  Henry  VL,  Act  IL,  Sc.  3. 
She  was  the  sweet  marjoram  of  the  salad,  or  rather  the  herb 
of  grace.— ^/r.y  Well  that  Ends  Well,  Act  IV.,  Sc.  5. 
Time  hath,  my  lord,  a  wallet  at  his  back. 
Wherein  he  puts  alms  for  oblivion, 
A  great-sized  monster  of  ingratitude. 

— Troilus  and  Cressida,  Act  III.,  Sc.  3. 

98 


O  Father  Abbot, 
An  old  man,  broken  with  the  storms  of  state. 
Is  come  to  lay  his  weary  bones  among  ye; 
Give  him  a  little  earth  for  charity. 

—Henry  VIIL,  Act  IV.,  Sc.  2. 
Death  lies  on  her  like  an  untimely  frost 
Upon  the  sweetest  flower  of  the  field. 

— Romeo  and  Juliet,  Act  IV.,  Sc.  5. 
Sweet  flowers  are  slow  and  weeds  make  haste. 

—Richard  III.,  Act  II.,  Sc.  4. 
How  poor  are  they  that  have  no  patience! 
What  wound  did  ever  heal  but  by  degrees  ? 

—Othello,  Act  II.,  Sc.  3. 
Tis  better  to  be  lowly  born 
And  range  with  humble  livers  in  content, 
Than  to  be  perked  up  in  a  glistering  grief 
And  wear  a  golden  sorrow. — Henry  VIIL,  Act  IL,  Sc.  3. 
How  far  that  little  candle  throws  his  beams! 
So  shines  a  good  deed  in  a  naughty  world. 

— Merchant  of  Venice,  Act  V.,  Sc,  i. 
Those  friends  thou  hast  and  their  adoption  tried, 
Grapple  them  to  thy  soul  with  hoops  of  steel. 

— Hamlet,  Act  I.,  Sc.  3. 
Let's  carry  with  us  ears  and  eyes  for  the  time, 
But  hearts  for  the  event. — Coriolanus,  Act  II. ,  Sc.  I. 

Why,  what's  the  matter, 
That  you  have  such  a  February  face. 
So  full  of  frost,  of  storm  and  cloudiness? 

— Much  Ado  About  Nothing,  Act  V.,  Sc.  3. 
Truth  hath  a  quiet  breast. — Richard  IL,  Act  L,  Sc.  3. 
The  expectancy  and  rose  of  this  fair  state. 

— Hamlet,  Act  III.,  Sc.  i. 
The  fire  of  the  fiint  shows  not  till  it  be  struck. 

— Timon  of  Athens,  Act  I,,  Sc.  i. 
Haply  I  think  on  thee,  and  then  my  state, 
Like  to  the  lark  at  break  of  day  arising, 
From  sullen  earth,  sings  hymns  at  heaven's  gate. 

Sonnet  XXIX. 
99 


0  two  such  silver  currents,  when  they  join, 
Do  glorify  the  banks  that  bound  them  in. 

— King  John,  Act  II.,  Sc.  i. 

Nothing  'gainst  time's  scythe  can  make  defence. 

— Sonnet  XII. 
When   the   sea  was   calm   all   boats   alike 
Showed  mastership  in  floating. — Coriolanus,  Act  IV,,  Sc,  I. 
God  be  praised,  that  to  believing  souls 
Gives  light  in  darkness,  comfort  in  despair. 

— Second  part  Henry  VL,  Act  11. ,  Sc.  i. 
The  strawberry  grows  underneath  the  nettle. 

— Henry  V .,  Act  I.,  Sc.  2. 
My  words  fly  up,  my  thoughts  remain  below : 
Words   without  thoughts  never  to  heaven  go. 

—Hamlet,  Act  III.,  Sc.  3. 

1  to  the  world  am  like  a  drop  of  water 
That   in  the  ocean  seeks  another  drop. 

'Tis  in  ourselves  that  we  are  thus  or  thus.  Our  bodies  are 
our  gardens,  to  the  which  our  wills  are  gardeners;  so  that  if 
we  will  plant  nettles,  or  sow  lettuce,  set  hyssop  and  weed  up 
thyme ....  have  it  sterile  with  idleness  or  manured  with  in- 
dustry, why,  the  power  and  corrigible  authority  of  this  lies  in 
our  wills. — Othello,  Act  I.,  Sc.  3. 

If  thou  art  rich,  thou  art  poor. 
For  like  an  ass  whose  back  with  ingots  bows, 
Thou  bear'st  thy  heavy  burden  but  a  journey. 
And  death  unloads  thee. 

— Measure  for  Measure,  Act  III.,  Sc.  i. 

It  may  be  that  in  no  single  instance  that  we  have 
cited  has  Shakespeare  discerned  the  true  spiritual  cor- 
respondence between  his  thought  and  the  natural  pheno- 
mena with  which  he  has  illustrated  it ;  nor  yet  is  it  clear 
that  the  difference  between  the  correspondence  which 
he  has  discerned  and  that  which  Swedenborg  claims  to 
have  had  revealed  to  him  in  the  interpretation  of  the 
Bible  is  other  than  a  difference  in  degree.     May  not 

100 


every  truth  of  which  we  find  confirmation  or  illumina- 
tion from  nature,  be  a  correspondence  adapted  to  our 
plane  of  intelligence  and  spiritual  evolution?  If  we  can 
learn  modesty  from  the  fringed  gentian,  faith  from 
the  skylark,  patience  from  the  maturing  processes  of 
vegetation,  trust  from  the  succession  of  the  seasons, 
are  we  not  mastering  the  alphabet  of  our  Creator,  are 
we  not  recognizing  the  correspondence  between  His 
thought  and  the  language  in  which  He  has  sought  to 
make  that  thought  intelligible  to  us? 

"Wisdom,"  says  the  learned  and  pious  Hooker  in 
his  "Laws  of  Ecclesiastical  Polity,"  "hath  diversely 
imparted  her  treasures  unto  the  world.  As  her 
ways  are  of  sundry  kinds,  so  her  manner  of  teach- 
ing is  not  one  and  the  same.  Some  things  she  open- 
eth  by  the  sacred  book  of  Scripture;  some  things 
by  the  glorious  works  of  nature ;  with  some  things 
she  inspireth  them  from  above  by  spiritual  influ- 
ence; in  some  things  she  leadeth  and  traineth  only 
by  worldly  experience  and  practice.  We  may  not 
so  in  any  one  special  kind  admire  her,  that  we  dis- 
grace her  in  any  other ;  but  let  all  her  ways  be  ac- 
cording unto  their  place  and  degree  adored." 

It  has  been  objected  by  the  literalists  that  the  Holy 
Scriptures,  to  be  a  perfect  rule  of  faith,  must  be  so 
clear  in  necessary  things  as  to  require  no  interpreta- 
tion; that  it  cannot  be  a  rule  or  measure  where  it  is 
obscure,  and,  therefore,  deeper  and  more  interior  mean- 
ings than  those  primes  impressionis  would  be  inconsis- 
tent with  a  perfect  rule  of  faith.  If  this  be  so,  why 
was  an  interval  of  several  centuries  allowed  to  elapse 
between  the  appearance  of  the  Old  Testament  and  the 

lOI 


New  ?  Why  was  the  Old  Testament  written  in  tongues 
which  probably  not  a  single  one  of  the  disciples  of  Christ 
could  understand?  Why  were  all  the  books  of  the  Bible 
written  down  in  what  for  centuries  have  ceased  to  be 
living  languages,  and  most  of  them  by  men  whose  names 
and  connexion  with  the  Word  have  long  since  passed 
into  oblivion?  Upon  this  theory  our  Bible  could  not 
be  a  rule  of  faith  to  any  who  do  not  thoroughly  under- 
stand the  Hebrew,  Coptic,  Aramaic  or  Syrian,  and 
Greek  tongues,  a  restriction  which  has  only  to  be  stated 
to  show  its  absurdity.  Why  do  adults  see  more  in  the 
Word  than  children ;  the  devout  more  than  the  worldly 
minded ;  and  why  does  every  devout  person  see  new  sig- 
nificance in  its  pages  every  time  he  reads  them  ?  Nay ! 
Why  has  our  phenomenal  world  so  many  mysteries? 
Why  did  we  have  to  wait  until  the  Word  became  ancient 
literature  before  we  learned  that  the  earth  revolved 
around  the  sun  instead  of  the  reverse;  before  the  wa- 
ters of  the  ocean  were  rendered  habitable  by  the  dis- 
covery of  the  compass;  before  electricity  was  made  the 
handmaid  of  civilization  ?  Why  does  the  great  book  of 
nature  continue  to  reveal  to  us  secrets  no  less  surprising 
than  any  that  it  has  ever  previously  yielded?  Surely 
we  have  no  more  reason  for  expecting  to  know  all  the 
truths  which  God  has  written  in  His  Word  at  one  time 
or  indeed  in  all  time  than  we  have  to  know  at  once  all 
the  secrets  of  His  mighty  works  which  constitute  our 
earthly  environment. 

Why  do  we  not  judge  our  fellow  man  alone  by  what 
he  says  or  by  his  appearance,  instead  of  searching  for 
the  motives  which  animate  him?  Why  do  we  not  talk 
to  our  children  as  we  talk  to  adults?    If  a  ship-builder 

102 


wished  to  convey  to  a  child  or  a  ploughman  some  notion 
of  an  ocean  steamer,  he  would  not  repeat  to  him  his  cal- 
culations of  the  strength  and  quantity  of  materials,  nor 
his  estimates  of  required  power  and  the  means  to  be 
employed  in  securing  it.  Had  we  occasion  to  explain 
to  an  illiterate  man  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the  tides,  we 
should  not  begin  with  Newton's  famous  demonstration. 
No  one's  first  step  in  the  study  of  any  natural  science 
would  be  likely  to  learn  anything  whatever  of  the  science 
itself.  We  could  never  become  astronomers  without  a 
knowledge  of  arithmetic,  and  yet  one  may  become  an 
expert  arithmetician  without  adding  an  iota  to  his 
knowledge  of  the  heavenly  bodies. 

There  is  no  more  reason  why  we  should  comprehend 
the  entire  significance  of  God's  Word  at  sight  when 
uttered  in  written  tongues  than  when  uttered  in  the  lan- 
guage of  nature.  It  seems  to  be  quite  as  reasonable  to 
insist  that  man  should  know  at  once,  even  at  his  birth, 
all  of  the  phenomenal  world  that  the  sciences  have 
been  gradually  disclosing  to  us  or  can  ever  disclose, 
or  that  we  will  ever  need  to  know,  as  that  he  should 
know  at  sight  all  of  the  spiritual  world  which  the  Bible 
purports  to  teach.  As  I  have  already  observed,  a  mes- 
sage from  the  Infinite  God  had  to  be  adapted  to  every 
possible  stage  of  spiritual  development.  It  is  impossible 
to  conceive  of  His  restricting  His  light  to  any  nation, 
tribe,  class,  age  or  condition  of  men.  Like  the  light  of 
the  natural  sun,  it  dawns  gradually,  and  the  day  is  half 
spent  before  it  is  diffused  with  meridian  affluence. 

It  necessarily  follows  that  such  a  communication  does 
not,  and  cannot,  mean  the  same  thing  precisely  to  any 
two  persons,  nor  can  it  mean  the  same  thing  to  any 

103 


one  person  at  two  successive  perusals.  Its  lessons  ex- 
pand or  contract  like  the  pupil  of  the  eye  in  proportion 
to  the  amount  of  light  thrown  upon  them,  and  the  light 
will  always  be  supplied  and  increased  so  far  and  so 
fast,  and  only  so  far  and  so  fast,  as  we  carry  the  les- 
sons of  the  Word  into  our  lives,  for  it  is  only  thus  and 
then  it  becomes  light  to  us.  We  may  safely  count  upon 
understanding  just  so  much  of  the  spiritual  or  interior 
meaning  of  the  Word  as  we  are  prepared  to  make  good 
use  of.  More  light  than  that  is  mercifully  withheld, 
lest  we  profane  it  and  become  blinded  forever  to  the 
sacred  truths  it  was  designed  to  reveal,  as  we  would  be 
blinded  by  the  rays  of  sun  if  their  brilliance  were  not 
partially  obscured  by  a  planetary  atmosphere.  If  our 
gospel  is  veiled,  said  Paul,  it  is  veiled  in  them  that  are 
perishing,  in  whom  the  God  of  this  world  hath  blinded 
the  minds  of  the  unbelieving,  that  the  light  of  the  gospel 
of  the  glory  of  Christ,  who  is  the  image  of  God,  should 
not  dawn  upon  them.  *  There  is  no  imaginable  limit 
to  the  heights  and  depths  of  the  spiritual  truths 
of  the  Word,  for  they  are  infinite.  The  more 
the  object-glass  of  the  telescope  is  enlarged,  the 
more  extensive  the  horizon  it  sweeps  and  the  greater 
the  number  of  stellar  worlds  it  reveals;  so  the  more 
faithfully  we  carry  into  our  daily  life  the  precepts  of 
the  Bible  as  they  appear  to  us,  the  more  light  will  be 
thrown  upon  it  and  the  more  will  its  interior  and  spir- 
itual meaning  well  up  from  inexhaustible  fountains. 

I  will  only  add  to  this  confession  made  many  years 
ago,  that  I  do  not  yet  know  of  any  book  or  lights  out- 

*  II  Corinthians,  iv.  4. 
104 


side  of  Swedenborg  and  his  interpreters  which  could 
have  solved  the  difficulties  which  confronted  me  in  try- 
ing to  find  the  proof  in  its  letter,  that  the  "Word  was 
God" ;  and  my  difficulties,  I  am  persuaded,  were  not  un- 
like, nor  less  formidable  than  those  which  thousands, 
nay  hundreds  of  thousands,  are  constantly  stumbling 
over  in  every  Christian  land.  What  an  insignificant 
fraction  of  the  so-called  Christian  population  of  the 
world  attend  any  Church,  or  participate  regularly,  or  at 
all,  in  any  of  the  religious  exercises  prescribed  by  the 
Church,  except  perchance  at  a  funeral  or  a  wedding? 
How  few  comparatively  have  ever  read  or  heard  a  chap- 
ter of  the  Bible  in  their  lives !  Yet  nearly  every  one  of 
this  Gentile  population  that  has  been  invested  with  the 
elective  franchise,  exercises  it.  He  sees  an  object  in 
voting;  he  does  not  see  any  object  in  going  to  Church. 
The  bread  of  life  that  is  there  broken  to  him  is  neither 
palatable  nor  satisfying.  What  means  the  rapid  spread 
of  rationalism  throughout  the  world  in  these  latter  days  ? 
Whence  the  enthusiasm  for  the  evolutionary  and  rev- 
olutionary doctrines  of  Darwin  and  Huxley  and  their 
disciples?  Whence  the  distinction  so  frequently  made 
even  by  the  clergy  between  the  Old  and  the  New  Tes- 
tament? Whence  the  increasing  skepticism  in  regard 
to  the  Divinity  of  Christ?  Whence  the  schisms  which 
are  rending  some  denominations,  and  the  dogmatic 
fatuities  which  are  employed  to  buttress  others?  Is 
it  not  because  theology  has  not  kept  up  with  the  thought 
and  spiritual  growth  of  the  world?  Is  it  not  because 
the  clergy  continue  to  read  and  interpret  the  Bible  much 
as  they  read  and  interpret  any  new  book  just  damp  from 
the  press,  with  only  the  dullest  kind  of  a  suspicion  of 

105 


the  depths  of  wisdom  it  enfolds?  Had  not  Tennyson 
but  too  much  authority  for  saying  that  in  the  present 
condition  of  the  Church, 

"There  is  more  faith  in  honest  doubt, 
Believe  me,  than  in  half  the  creeds?" 


IX. 


I  OUGHT  not  to  close  this  narrative  without  referring 
to  another  incident  growing  out  of  my  St.  Thomas  ad- 
ventures, that  I  look  back  upon  with  great  satisfaction 
for  many  reasons,  not  the  least  important  of  which  was 
the  additional  evidence  it  furnished  that  in  all  this  West 
Indian  excursion  a  wiser  than  I  was  directing  my  steps ; 
that  I  was  even  then  all  unconsciously  fulfilling  the 
prediction  of  the  prophet,  "I  will  bring  you  into  the  wil- 
derness, and  there  will  I  plead  with  you  face  to  face."* 

Just  before  sailing  for  Hayti,  I  received  some  letters 
of  introduction  from  Mr.  B.  C.  Clark,  of  Boston,  who 
held  the  commission  of  Consul  from  the  Haytian  Gov- 
ernment for  that  city.  I  was  not  personally  known  to 
Mr.  Clark,  but  he  was  doubtless  prompted  to  this  cour- 
tesy by  Mr.  Simones,  an  agent  of  the  Haytian  Govern- 
ment, residing  in  New  York,  whom  I  had  consulted 
about  my  trip  to  his  country.  Among  these  letters  was 
one  to  Mr.  B.  P.  Hunt,  a  merchant  at  Port  au  Prince. 
On  our  arrival  at  that  port  and  before  we  had  moored, 
an  elderly  gentleman  came  out  to  us  in  a  boat,  and  after 
briefly  saluting  the  captain,  was  presented  to  me.     He 

*  Ezekiel  xx.  35. 
106 


gave  his  name  as  Mr.  Hunt;  said  that  Mr.  Clark  had 
advised  him  of  my  contemplated  visit  to  the  island,  and 
if  he  could  be  of  any  service  to  me  during  my  stay  there 
he  wished  to  place  himself  at  my  disposal.  I  thanked 
him,  handed  him  my  letter  of  introduction,  and  after 
a  brief  conversation — it  was  then  near  sunset — he  asked 
me  where  I  proposed  to  take  my  lodgings  in  Port  au 
Prince.  I  said  I  did  not  yet  know,  that  I  should  remain 
on  board  until  morning,  and  then  go  on  shore  and  look 
up  the  best  quarters  I  could  find  in  the  town.  He  said 
promptly  that  that  would  not  do,  that  it  was  as  much 
as  my  life  was  worth  to  sleep  on  the  vessel  in  that 
harbor  until  morning;  he  added  that  there  was  not  a 
hotel  or  boarding  house  in  Port  au  Prince  that  I  would 
be  content  to  pass  a  night  in,  and  that  I  must  go  home 
with  him.  After  satisfying  myself  that  it  would  be 
imprudent  to  decline  Mr.  Hunt's  hospitality,  I  accom- 
panied him  to  his  quarters,  where  I  remained  during 
my  sojourn  at  Port  au  Prince,  every  successive  hour 
of  which  he  made  me  feel  more  and  more  grateful 
for  the  circumstances  which  had  inspired  him  to  in- 
vite me. 

In  due  time  it  transpired  that  Mr.  Hunt  was  a 
graduate  of  Harvard  College,  in  the  same  class  with 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  of  whom  he  had  many  inter- 
esting things  to  tell  me;  that  without  any  literary  pre- 
tensions, he  was  a  man  of  varied  and  extensive  reading; 
that  he  knew  more  about  Hayti,  its  public  men  and  peo- 
ple, and  the  books  written  by  or  about  them,  than  any 
one  else  I  ever  met  there  or  elsewhere ;  more,  probably, 
than  any  other  man  then  living,  and  with  an  admirable 
faculty  of  Communicating  his  information  in  conversa- 

107 


tion.  He  was  a  native  of  Massachusetts,  and  seemed 
eminently  qualified  in  every  way  for  a  successful  career 
in  his  native  land.  For  reasons  which  I  never  ventured 
to  enquire  into,  but  which  I  had  some  reason  to  sus- 
pect had  their  origin  in  domestic  troubles  of  some  kind, 
he  went  out  to  Hayti,  travelled  over  the  island  for  a  year 
or  two,  and  finally  contracted  a  partnership  in  a  com- 
mercial house  in  Port  au  Prince,  where  he  had  been 
reasonably  prosperous  for  some  thirteen  years  previous 
to  my  making  his  acquaintance.  Aside  from  the  grati- 
tude which  I  owed  him  for  taking  me  into  his  house, 
without  which  I  probably  would  have  been  in  the  ceme- 
tery with  most  of  my  recent  shipmates  within  a  week 
after  my  arrival,  I  acquired  a  sincere  esteem  for  the 
man,  an  esteem  which  I  think  was  cordially  reciprocated. 
Mr.  Hunt  had  pretty  decided  opinions  upon  most  of  the 
great  problems  of  life,  and  was  tolerably  familiar,  much 
more  than  I  was  then,  with  what  the  most  eminent 
writers  had  written  about  them.  I  found  his  religious 
opinions,  however,  even  more  unsettled  if  possible  than 
mine.  He  was  a  rationalist,  without  much  faith  in  any 
future  state  of  existence  or  in  the  Divine  origin  of  the 
Word.  He  had  a  well-stocked  library  of  books,  with 
the  contents  of  which  he  was  quite  familiar.  When  I 
returned  to  New  York,  I  felt  moved  to  send  him  an 
account  of  the  revolution  some  of  my  opinions  had  un- 
dergone since  we  parted,  and  the  circumstances  which 
led  to  it.  I  also  sent  him  with  some  other  books,  two 
or  three  volumes  of  Swedenborg  which  I  recom- 
mended to  his  notice.  In  the  course  of  a  few  weeks  I 
received  from  him  a  letter  in  which  he  thus  alluded 
to  my  envoi: 

io8 


Port  au  Prince,  April  25,  1854. 
My  De:ar  Mr.  Bigelow: 

I  have  received  your  letters  of  March  14  and  23, 
with  Evening  Post,  Swedenborg,  Humboldt,  Colonial 
Sal  Trade,  yth  Census,  Medicine  Chest  and  Homoeo- 
pathic Physician,  Magazines  and  Riding  Whip,  for 
all  of  which  accept  my  most  sincere  thanks,  and  most 
particularly  for  Swedenborg.  He  seems  to  have  es- 
tablished a  "raw"  in  your  mind  which  I  little  expect- 
ed, and  I  little  expected  it  because  in  some  casual  con- 
versation we  had  about  ghosts  and  the  "supernatural" 
so  called,  which  is  perhaps  only  the  natural  unex- 
plored, I  found  you  an  unbeliever.  Swedenborg  is 
not  entirely  a  new  acquaintance.  About  eighteen 
years  ago  I  had  his  Heaven  and.  Hell  and  Apocalypse 
Revealed  in  a  former  collection  of  books,  and  they 
then  made  a  strong  impression  on  my  mind  which 
the  cares  of  the  world  and  the  deceitfulness  of  trying 
to  get  "riches"  have  not  wholly  effaced,  and  which 
your  kindness  has  enabled  me  to  renew.  On  Sunday 
last  when  I  got  these  books  I  read  them,  and  have 
been  looking  into  them  by  snatches  ever  since,  if  not 
with  pleasure  at  least  with  great  interest,  for  now, 
as  earlier  in  life,  they  disturb  me.  I  have  not  time 
to  say  the  tithe  of  what  I  have  to  say  of  this  matter, 
but  during  these  eighteen  years,  I  have  considered 
Swedenborg  the  father  of  all  those  who,  in  modern 
times  (since  Jesus  and  the  prophets)  have  been  able 
to  see  spirits,  who  have  given  us  glimpses  (very  im- 
perfect) of  the  spiritual  world,  and  who,  in  short, 
have  been,  and  now  are,  gifted  with  second  sight, 
animal  magnetism  and  cognate  phenomena.  I  never 
sought  the  acquaintance  of  a  Swedenborgian,  but 
when  I  have  casually  met  them,  to  the  number  of  half 
a  dozen  at  long  intervals — scholars,  ladies,  seams- 
tresses, shoemakers,  apprentices — I  have  left  their 

109 


conversation  with  the  impression  that  I  have  been 
talking  to  a  person  pure,  elevated,  spiritual,  and  in 
certain  departments  of  the  mind,  tho'  not  strong, 
highly  intellectual.  In  1841  I  asked  James  Faxon,  a 
shoemaker  apprentice  in  Boston,  what  was  the  dif- 
ference between  a  good  man  religious  and  a  good 
man  not  religious.  He  said  "Great.  The  one  is  good 
from  love  of  God,  the  other  from  love  of  himself,'* 
and  he  sent  me  away  sorrowful,  like  the  lawyer  in  the 
Bible. 

In  the  course  of  the  following  year  Mr.  Hunt's  health, 
always  delicate,  compelled  him  to  return  to  the  United 
States  to  secure  the  benefit  of  a  higher  grade  of  medi- 
cal advice  than  was  accessible  in  Hayti.  He  took  up  his 
residence  in  Philadelphia. 

Knowing  how  completely  he  was  engrossed  by  his 
business  when  I  left  him,  how  little  there  was  in  his 
environment  to  stimulate  such  a  curiosity  as  the  writ- 
ings of  Swedenborg  were  likely  to  satisfy,  and  the  many 
prejudices  which  any  book  that  takes  the  Divine  origin 
and  plenary  inspiration  of  the  Bible  as  its  point  of 
departure,  has  to  contend  with  in  trying  to  penetrate 
the  mind  of  an  agnostic  of  his  age  and  temperament, 
I  was  not  surprised,  though  disappointed,  by  the  tone 
of  his  letter;  nor  was  I  surprised,  though  disappointed, 
at  hearing  nothing  more  from  him  about  Swedenborg 
for  many  years. 

In  the  spring  of  1864  I  was  equally  surprised  and 
proportionately  gratified  by  the  receipt  of  a  letter  from 
him,  most  of  which  was  consecrated  to  Swedenborg 
and  revealed  the  changes  in  his  views,  which  can  be 
best  described  in  his  own  language. 

no 


PHILADEI.PKIA,  March  i8,  1864. 
My  Dear  Mr.  Bigki^ow: 

*  *  *  Since  these  small  matters  have  made  it 
necessary  for  me  to  trouble  you  with  this  letter,  I 
cannot  omit  the  opportunity  of  mentioning  another 
and  quite  different  subject. 

You  may  remember  that  ten  years  ago  this  month 
you  sent  me  at  Port  au  Prince  some  volumes  of  the 
works  of  Swedenborg,  accompanied  by  a  letter  which 
at  the  time  I  thought  rather  remarkable.  The  vol- 
umes in  question  were  The  True  Christian  Religion, 
Heaven  and  Hell,  and  Documents  Relating  to  the 
Life  of  Swedenborg,  I  looked  into  those  books  at 
the  time  they  were  received  and  later,  with  awakened 
curiosity  (for  earlier  in  life  I  had  seen  them),  and 
sometimes  with  a  more  direct  interest,  but  only  at  in- 
tervals, and  these  often  long.  The  impression  these 
readings  made  seemed  to  remain,  however,  for  invari- 
ably, during  the  last  three  or  four  years,  whenever  I 
have  thought  of  a  future  state,  I  have  found  myself 
looking  at  it  from  Swedenborg's  point  of  view.  This 
winter  my  chronic  complaint,  co-operating  with 
choice,  has  kept  me  at  home  a  great  deal,  and  after 
reading  in  this  and  that  direction  for  some  time  I, 
without  any  fixed  purpose  of  doing  so  at  the  com- 
mencement, took  up  these  books,  and  one  after  an- 
other went  carefully  through  them.  There  are  some 
things  in  them  which  I  have  not  been  fully  able  to 
appropriate.  I  do  not  find  a  satisfactory  account  of 
foreknowledge  in  its  bearing  on  foreordination,  and 
the  persons  whose  condition  in  the  spiritual  world  is 
described  are  too  strictly  confined  to  the  theological 
class.  But  on  the  whole,  the  premise  once  granted 
that  Swedenborg  was  the  appointed  servant  of  the 
Lord,  the  entire  system  presents  the  most  logical, 
rational  and  natural  account  of  man's  spiritual  nature 

III 


and  future  life  which  I  have  any  knowledge  of.  In 
fact  it  is  the  only  theology  which  has  ever  at  all  com- 
mended itself  to  my  acceptance.  Besides,  the  per- 
sonal character  and  life  of  the  man  have  great  weight 
with  me  as  collateral  evidence  of  the  truth.  Sweden- 
borg  did  not,  like  all  other,  even  good  founder^  of 
sects,  Wesley  included,  seek  personal  power.  He 
never  thought  of  being  at  the  head  of  a  new  organiza- 
tion. He  did  not  seek  to  make  proselytes.  He  con- 
tented himself  with  simply  placing  on  record  the  rev- 
elations he  had  been  commanded  to  make,  and  left  it 
to  the  Lord  to  establish  His  visible  Church  in  His 
own  way  and  time.  He  nevertheless  speaks  as  one 
having  authority,  and  does  not  argue  or  beg  the  ques- 
tion, and  this  I  like,  for  I  am  weary  of  conjecture.  I 
have  no  value  for  cases  made  out  by  construction.  I 
am  seeking  for  more  of  his  works,  and  must  find  out 
whether  Dr.  Bush's  lectures  were  ever  published  ex- 
cept in  the  Evening  Post.  Meantime  I  must  thank 
you  anew  for  these  volumes,  which  it  has  taken  me  ten 
years  to  find  the  full  value  of.  **Good  seed,  it  seems, 
will  keep." 

Some  years  before  this  letter  was  written  Mr.  Hunt 
had  retired  from  the  commercial  house  with  which  he 
had  been  connected,  and  the  remainder  of  his  life  was 
consecrated  pretty  faithfully  to  his  Master's  business. 
He  interested  himself  especially  in  the  people  of  African 
descent  whom  the  war  had  rendered  homeless  and  des- 
titute, and  in  collecting  the  children  of  colored  soldiers, 
orphans  especially,  into  schools.  His  charity  took  this 
direction  partly  because  these  people  seemed  at  the  time 
most  in  need  of  assistance,  protection  and  instruction, 
and  partly  because  he  had  acquired  during  his  long  resi- 
dence in  Hayti  an  interest  and  respect  for  the  race 

112 


which  it  rarely  enjoys  in  countries  where  it  occupies  a 
servile  position.  In  1867  he  wrote  me  a  letter  from 
which  I  take  a  single  paragraph  to  show  how  closely 
the  Church  was  associated  in  his  mind  with  his  charities, 
and  how  entirely  he  had  come  to  regard  life  as  a  pre- 
cious opportunity  which  it  pained  him  to  see  any  one 
neglect. 

1724  Frankford  Road^  Phil.,  June  17,  1867. 
My  Dear  Friend  : 

This  is  a  country  in  which  all  social  and  govern- 
mental experiments  that  have  not  been  tried  on  the 
other  hemisphere,  or  which  have  been  tried  badly, 
are  to  have  a  fair  field ;  and  the  late  war  was  the  clean- 
ing process  to  get  this  field  ready.  Are  you  ready  to 
go  into  it?  For,  if  the  New  Church  is  the  True 
Church,  as  I  firmly  believe,  it  must  be  made  manifest 
by  able,  practical  men  of  the  world,  who  earnestly 
carry  their  faith  into  practice.  * 


In  looking  back  over  the  series  of  incidents  culmin- 
ating in  the  restoration  of  my  faith  in  the  Word,  which 
I  have  roughly  outlined,  how  can  I  hesitate  to  believe 
that  I  was  led — should  I  not  say  driven — every  step  by 
the  Master  ?  Why  did  I  go  to  Hayti  at  all,  when  there 
were  so  many  other  places  more  interesting  to  visit  and 

*  Mr.  Hunt  bequeathed  that  portion  of  his  library  which  re- 
lated to  the  history  and  vicissitudes  of  the  West  India  Islands, 
and  especially  of  their  African  population — some  700  volumes — 
besides  a  valuable  collection  of  MS.  notes  and  charts,  to  the 
Boston  Public  Library. 

"3 


more  accessible,  that  I  had  never  seen?  Why  was  Mr. 
Clark,  whom  I  did  not  know,  inspired  to  give  me  a  let- 
ter of  introduction  to  Mr.  Hunt,  of  whom  I  had  never 
heard?  Why  did  the  fever  drive  me  on  to  another 
place  I  had  no  curiosity  to  see,  and  which  I  omitted 
no  effort  to  avoid;  and  why  did  I  happen  there  just 
when  the  disabled  French  steamer  bound  for  New  York 
and  the  cholera  left  me  no  alternative  but  to  remain 
two  or  three  weeks  instead  of  as  many  hours?  Why 
was  Mr.  Kjerulff  the  only  guest  at  the  hotel  with  whom 
I  could  enter  into  any  social  relations?  Why  did  I 
stumble  upon  a  chapter  in  the  Bible  in  a  morning's 
reading  that  provoked  me  to  reveal  my  agnosticism  to 
this  comparative  stranger  ?  Why  had  I  been  for  nearly 
two  months  separated  from  all  business  cares  and  pre- 
occupations, and  even  from  books  and  newspapers,  my 
mind  meantime  lying  fallow,  until  it  had  grown  hungry 
and  thirsty  for  something  to  feed  upon,  before  Mr. 
Kjerulff  placed  Swedenborg's  books  into  my  hand? 
Why  were  we  to  be  fellow-passengers  and  dependent 
upon  each  other  exclusively  for  society  for  most  of  the 
succeeding  month?  Why,  I  ask,  all  these  incidents, 
none  of  which  would  have  occurred  to  me  if  I  could 
have  had  my  own  way,  unless  it  was  necessary  to  make 
me  lie  down  to  sleep  like  Jacob,  upon  a  pillow  of  stone, 
that  when  I  should  awake  I  might  be  ready  to  exclaim : 
"Surely  the  Lord  is  in  this  place  and  I  did  not  know 
it."  Any  one  of  the  incidents  from  the  time  I  left  New 
York,  not  to  speak  of  those  which  decided  me  to  go,  fail- 
ing, and  I  was  constantly  struggling  to  make  them  fail, 
I  might  still  be  without  the  Bible,  if  not  without  a  God, 
in  the  world.    What  an  unexpected  significance  my  ex- 

114 


perience  has  given  to  the  words  of  the  prophet,  "It  is 
not  in  man  to  direct  his  way,  nor  in  man  that  walketh 
to  direct  his  steps." 

I  waited  patiently  for  the  Lord; 

And  He  inclined  unto  me  and  heard  my  cry. 

He  brought  me  up  also  out  of  a  horrible  pit,  out  of  the 

miry  clay, 
And  set  my  feet  upon  a  rock,  and  established  my  goings. 
And  He  hath  put  a  new  song  in  my  mouth,  even  praise  unto 

our  God. 

— Psalm  xL  1-3. 


115 


APPENDIX, 


Miss  Rose  Kjerulff's  letter: 

Manitou,  Colorado,  December  i8,  '95. 
De:ar  Mr.  Big^i^ow: 

The  little  book  you  so  kindly  sent  me  gives  me  much 
pleasure.  0£  all  I  have  seen  written  about  our  Sweden- 
borg,  your  estimate  o£  him  is  the  most  satisfactory. 
Such  a  book  would  be  of  immense  use  could  it  be  gen- 
erally known,  but  I  believe  it  is  not  published  for  the 
public.  Certainly  yours  was  a  wonderful  experience  in 
our  Islands,  indeed  Providential. 

There  are  some  friends  of  mine  in  the  East  whom  I 
would  like  to  have  read  it,  but  I  prize  this  copy  that  you 
sent  me  too  highly  to  part  with  it.  One  of  these  friends 
resides  in  New  York  City,  whom  possibly  you  may  have 
met.  She  is  of  a  strictly  Presbyterian  family,  but  I 
believe  has  joined  our  New  Church  Society  in  35th 
Street.  She  told  me  she  could  not  accept  the  cruel  doc- 
trines of  the  old  Church.  I  think  hers  one  of  the  most 
spiritual  minds  I  have  known. 

My  father  went  to  heaven  in  1874 — ^he  was  in  his 
Both  year.  He  was  most  happy  when  he  knew  he  was 
to  go,  and  his  spiritual  or  internal  sight  was  open  to 
behold  the  other  world.  One  of  my  sisters  who  died  in 
Boston  in  1868  and  a  favorite  aunt  were  present  with 

117 


him  three  days  before  he  went,  and  they  told  him  that 
he  would  be  with  them  in  three  days.  He  told  the  fam- 
ily of  this  but  it  was  hard  to  believe,  as  he  did  not  seem 
so  ill,  and  the  Doctor  declared  he  would  be  well  next 
day.  However,  my  sister  insisted  on  staying  all  night 
with  him  when  she  knew  my  father  had  said  exactly 
when  he  was  to  go,  which  happened  exactly  as  indicated. 
Of  course  they  would  not  tell  that  Danish  doctor  how 
my  father  knew  he  was  to  go  just  at  that  hour.  I  was 
in  New  York  at  the  time  and  only  knew  of  the  circum- 
stances on  my  return  home  a  few  months  later.  My 
father  was  more  than  ever  convinced  in  his  last  days  of 
the  truth  of  Swedenborg's  revelations,  and  he  went  joy- 
ously to  the  next  world.  He  was  a  most  spiritual  man 
and  did  much  good  while  he  lived.  He  had  settled  in 
St.  Croix  the  last  years  of  his  life,  being  fond  of  that 
Island.  I  was  residing  there  until  the  Negro  Insurrec- 
tion in  1878,  when  my  beautiful  home  there  was  utterly 
destroyed,  as  was  the  best  portion  of  the  estates,  and  I 
had  to  return  to  this  country  to  my  sister  and  brother- 
in-law.  Commodore  Spicer,  who  then  was  in  command 
of  the  Boston  Navy  Yard.  My  brother  then  died  in- 
testate, all  I  possessed  in  his  hands,  and  then  our  Deal- 
ing Court  (Chancery)  took  everything  and  gave  us 
nothing,  as  is  the  custom  in  those  Colonies  for  absentees. 
My  youngest  sister  who  had  been  in  Europe  a  number 
of  years  saved  enough  so  that  we  can  exist  up  in  these 
mountains  in  seclusion  and  quiet,  which  we  prefer  to 
a  fashionable  life.  You  know  something  of  our  West 
India  habits ;  now  we  have  learned  to  wait  on  ourselves, 
I  think  we  are  the  happier  for  it.  My  nephew  George 
Butler  (whose  father  you  were  so  good  to  save  from 

118 


consumption  in  1868)  is  now  on  Government  work  of 
irrigation  for  the  Indian  Reservation  in  Arizona,  has 
done  masterful  work  in  Montana  and  will  be  a  useful 
man  to  his  country.  He  has  great  faculty,  he  was  a 
most  wonderful  child.  We  are  ever  most  grateful  for 
your  great  kindness  in  helping  us  as  you  did  when  I 
appealed  to  you  on  my  arrival  from  Havana  when  his 
mother  went  to  her  home  in  heaven.  I  trust  not  to 
have  wearied  you  with  this  long  letter. 
With  much  esteem  I  remain. 

Sincerely  yours. 

Rose:  Kjerulff. 

B. 

Chronological  List  of  Swedenborg's  Principal  Theolog- 
ical Works,  Translated  into  English: 
Arcana  Ccelestia,  1747-1758. 
Heaven  and  Hell,  1757,  1758. 
The  White  Horse,  1757,  1758. 
The  New  Jerusalem  and  Its  Heavenly  Doctrines, 

1757,  1758- 
The  Earths  in  the  Universe,  1756,  1758. 
The  Last  Judgment,  1757,  1758. 
The  Apocalypse  Explained,  1757- 1759. 
Summary  Exposition  of  the  Prophets  and  Psalms, 

1759,  1760. 

The  Doctrine  of  the  New  Jerusalem  Respecting  the 

Lord,  1761-1763. 
The  Doctrine  of  the  New  Jerusalem  Concerning  the 

Sacred  Scriptures,  1761-1763. 
The  Doctrine  of  Life  for  the  New  Jerusalem,  1761- 

1763. 

119 


The  Doctrine  of  Faith  of  the  New  Jerusalem,  1761- 

1763. 
Continuation  of  the  Last  Judgment,  1763. 
The  Divine  Love  and  Wisdom,  1763,  1764. 
The  Divine  Providence,  176^,  1764. 
The  Doctrine  of  Charity,  1764. 
Apocalypse  Revealed,  1764- 1766. 
Conjugial  Love,  1767,  1768. 
Brief  Exposition  of  the  Doctrines  of  the  New  Church, 

1768,  1769. 
Intercourse  of  the  Soul  and  the  Body,  1769. 
The  True  Christian  Religion,  lyGg-iyyi. 
The  Coronis,  1771. 


120 


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